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ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND 
ITS MAD FOLK 




LONDON AGENTS: 
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL 6f Co. LTD. 



ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 
AND ITS MAD FOLK 

The Harness Prize Essay for 1913 



BY 



EDGAR ALLISON PEERS, B.A. 

Late Scholar of Christ's College, Cambridge. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

W. HEFFER AND SONS LTD. 

1914 



To 

My Mother 



CONTENTS. 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. Introductory 1 

II. The Presentation of Madness— from the 

Standpoint of History .... 8 

III. The Presentation of Madness— from the 

Standpoint of Literature - - - 42 

IV. Mad Folk in Tragedy and C0MEDY—(i) The 

Maniacs 60 

V. Mad Folk in Tragedy and Comedy— 

(ii) Imbecility 118 

VI. Mad Folk in Tragedy and Comedy— 

(iii) Melancholy 126 

VII. Mad Folk in Tragedy and Comedy— 
(iv) Delusions, Hallucinations, and 
OTHER Abnormal States - - - - 150 

VIII. Mad Folk in Tragedy and Comedy— (v) The 

Pretenders 167 

IX. Conclusion - 176 



PREFACE. 

The bulk of this essay is the result of 
research work along lines which, so far as 
the author knows, have not been previously 
traversed. The arrangement and the general 
treatment of the work are therefore original. 
Certain books, notably Tuke's "History of the 
Insane in the British Isles," Bucknill's **Mad 
Folk of Shakespeare," Bradley's "Shakespearean 
Tragedy," and Ward's "English Dramatic 
Literature," have been of special utility in 
places where reference is made to them. The 
critical judgments of these authors, however, 
have by no means always been followed. 

The original title of the essay was " The 
Mad Folk of English Comedy and Tragedy 
down to 1642." It has been shortened for 
purposes of convenience, and the term Eliza- 
bethan extended in order to take in a few 
plays which belong to the next two reigns. 
The term is, however, generally recognised to 
be an elastic one, and most of the plays dealt 
with fall easily within it. 

Much of the revision of this work has been 
carried out under pressure of other duties. I 
have been greatly helped in it by the criticisms 
and suggestions of Professor G. Moore Smith, 



by the constant help of Mr. N. G. Brett James, 
by some useful information given me by Mr. 
C. LI. Bullock, and especially by the kindness 
of my friend, Dr. J. Hamilton, who has read the 
essay through in manuscript from the point of 
view of the physician. Although I have not 
always taken up this standpoint in dealing 
with my subject, I have tried at all times to 
give it due consideration, for, as Ferdinand says 
in the ** Duchess of Malfi," " Physicians are like 
kings : they brook no contradiction." 

E. A. P. 

Mill Hill, 

March, 1914. 



CHAPTER I. 

Introductory. 

*' Shall I tell you why? 

Ay, sir, and wherefore ; for they say every why hath 
a wherefore." 

(Shakespeare : " Comedy of Errors.'*) 

The jingling criticism of Dromio of Syracuse 
will ever recur to the essayist on an uncon- 
ventional subject. Lest any therefore should 
claim of this essay that "in the why and the 
wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason," excuse 
shall come prologue to the theme, and its 
"wherefore" shall receive a moment's merited 
attention. Of what utility, it may be asked, can 
the study of certain insane persons appearing 
in early modern drama be to the student of 
to-day ? To this question let us give a double 
answer. The study has a distinct historical 
value, for from the mass of original documents 
which form the body of drama under considera- 
tion, we may gather much of the progress which 
has been made in the attitude of the country 
towards insanity, and hence the increasing 
tendency towards a humane and intelligent out- 
look upon disease in general. Our study is also 
of value from the point of view of literature— 
partly as shewing the varying accuracy of our 



2 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

dramatists and the art with which they por- 
trayed their mad folk and introduced them into 
their plays, partly hy selecting and exposing the 
chief types of the mad folk themselves, con- 
sidering them on their own merits, as pieces of 
art of intrinsic literary value. This last will be 
the chief business of the present essay. 

We shall follow the order above indicated, 
regarding the presentation of madness succes- 
sively from the standpoints of history and of 
literature. Under the latter head we shall 
consider several general questions before pro- 
ceeding to isolate individual characters in turn. 
Lastly, we shall endeavour, from the matter 
furnished us by these plays, to extract some 
general conclusions. 

One proviso must be made before we can 
embark upon our subject. What, for the pur- 
poses of this essay, is to be the criterion of 
madness? In ordinary life, as we know, the 
border-land of the rational and the irrational is 
but ill-defined. We cannot always tell whether 
mental disease is actually present in a person 
whom we have known all our lives, much less 
can we say when the pronounced eccentricity of 
a stranger has passed the bourn which divides 
it from insanity. The medical profession itself 
has not always been too wise where madness is 
concerned ; and where the profession is at fault, 
with every detail of the case before it, how 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

can the layman aspire to success, with only a 
few pages of evidence before him of a "case" 
propounded by another layman of three 
centuries before? Were we to take the point 
of view of the physician we should be plunged 
into a medical dissertation for which we are 
both ill-equipped and ill-inclined. 

But there is another, and a far more serious 
objection, already hinted at, to the adoption in 
this essay of the medical point of view. The 
authors themselves were not physicians ; in 
many cases, as will be seen, they appear to 
have had but an imperfect technical knowledge 
of insanity and its treatment ; their ideas were 
based largely on the loose and popular medical 
ideas of the Elizabethan age. If we are to 
consider this subject as a department of litera- 
ture we must adopt the point of view of the 
dramatist, not of the practical physician. We 
must, for the time, definitely break with those 
who enquire deeply and seriously into the state 
of mind of every character in Shakespeare. In 
dealing with "King Lear," for example, we shall 
make no attempt to pry behind the curtain 
five minutes before the opening of the play 
for the purpose of detecting thus early some 
symptoms of approaching senile decay. Nor 
shall we follow those who endeavour to carry 
the history of Shylock beyond the limits of 
Shakespeare's knowledge of him, in the hope of 



4 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

discovering whether he was true or false to the 
religion of his fathers. The critic who peeps 
behind the scenes at such times as these finds 
only the scene - shifters and the 'green room, 
where his nice offence will soon receive appro- 
priate comments ! 

Our best plan, then, will be habitually to 
consider the plays from the point of view which 
we take to be that of the author himself. 
Prejudices will be put aside, and predispositions 
to premature diagnoses resisted. Constance and 
Timon of Athens, with several personages from 
Marlowe's dramas, will be regarded (with some 
effort) as sane, for the simple and quite adequate 
reason that they were so regarded by their 
authors. The question whether or no Hamlet 
was actually insane will, for the same reason, 
be dismissed in a few words ; while the many 
witches who haunt Elizabethan drama, and 
whose prototypes afforded in nearly every case 
genuine examples of dementia, will be heroically 
disregarded, as falling without the bounds of our 
proposed theme. 

From the number of occurrences in this body 
of drama of such words as ** mad," " madness," 
" Bedlam," " frantic," and the like, it might be 
supposed that there are more genuine mad folk 
than actually appear. A few words will suffice 
to clear up this difficulty. 

The term " madness " is often used in a loose, 



INTKODUCTORY 5 

unmeaning sense, — in phrases such as " Mad 
wench ! ", somewhat resembling the equally un- 
meaning slang of to-day. To insist on this point 
would probably provoke the charge of a lack of 
the sense of humour, and insistence is indeed 
unnecessary. Most readers of Shakespeare will 
recall Leontes' transport before the supposed 
statue of his wife, a transport which he charac- 
terises as " madness " ; Portia's description of 
that "hare," "madness the youth"; Biron's 

apostrophe : 

" Behaviour, what wert thou 
Till this madman show'd thee ? " i 

and no less Shylock's famous description of men 

that 

" are mad if they behold a cat." 2 

Those who are acquainted with "Philaster" 
may remember Megra's description of 

"A woman's madness. 
The glory of a fury," 3 

and everyone has at some time or other lighted 
upon that kind of "fine madness" which is 
the property of every true poet, and which 
Drayton, attributing it to Marlowe, declares 

" rightly should possess a poet's brain." * 

Nowhere in these passages are we expected to 
see insanity, though the last two are somewhat 
stronger than the others, and are typical of 

1 " Love's Labour's Lost," v., 2, 337. 

2 •• Merchant of Venice," iv., 1, 48. 

3 "Philaster," ii., 4. 

♦ Drayton, " The Battle of Agincourt." 



6 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

many places where "madness" is used for 
simple passion and for inspiration respectively. 
In a very special sense, however, madness is 
used for the passion of love, to such an extent 
that there is an actual gradation into madness 
itself. Loosely, and often humorously, the lover 
is said to be mad for the same reason as the 
lunatic. To quote Shakespeare once more — as 
he is more familiar than many of his contem- 
poraries-— 

" The lunatic, the lover and the poet, 
Are of imagination all compact." i 
There is only a step between seeing " Helen's 
beauty in a brow of Egypt," ^ and seeing "more 
devils than vast hell can hold."^ Once cool 
reason has given way to "frenzy," the Eliza- 
bethan is not always too subtle in his distinc- 
tions within that convenient term. So when 
Troilus informs us that he is " mad in Cressida's 
love,"^ when Rosalind jestingly speaks of love as 
deserving "a dark house and a whip,"^ and when 
Mercutio declares that his Rosaline-tormented 
Romeo will "sure run mad,"^ we must not 
altogether discard such references as idle or 
even conventional. For while there is a great 
gulf fixed between such " frenzies " as these 
and the madness of the love-lorn Ophelia or 

1 •' Midsummer Night's Dream," v., 1, 7. 2 1. ll. 3 l. 9. 

4 *• Troilus and Cressida," i., 1, 51. 

5 ** As You Like It," iii., 2, 420. 

6 " Komeo and Juliet," ii., 4, 5. 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

even of the Gaoler's Daughter in the "Two 
Noble Kinsmen/' we can only account for such 
a peculiar case as Memnon — in Fletcher's " Mad 
Lover " — by postulating a conscious develop- 
ment of the idea that "love is a kind of 
madness." 

It is possible that the difficulty of keeping 
to the point of view we have chosen may lead 
to many mistakes being made in our treatment 
of individual characters. But it seems better 
to run the risk of this than to set about this 
work as though it were a medical treatise, or 
as though the plays to be considered had been 
produced by a kind of evolution, and not by 
very human, imperfect, work-a-day playwrights. 
That being said, Prologue has finished : 

" Now, good or bad, 'tis but the chance of war." 



CHAPTER 11. 

The Presentation of Madness— from the 
Standpoint of History. 

"A mad world, my masters! " 

{Middleton.) 

The earliest view of madness which finds its 
way into this drama and persists throughout it, 
is based on the idea of possession by evil spirits. 
This conception came down from remote ages ; 
it accounts, for example, for the madness of King 
Saul in the Old Testament, when " The Spirit 
of the Lord departed from Saul and an evil 
spirit troubled him."^ In the Elizabethan Age, 
demoniacal possession was still regarded as one 
of the most potent causes of insanity ; it was 
made to account not only for mental disease 
but for all kinds of physical deformations and 
imperfections, whether occurring alone, or, as is 
often the case, accompanying idiocy. An off- 
shoot, as it were, from this idea, is the ascription 
of mental disease to the influence of witches, 
who were often themselves (ironically enough), 
persons suffering from mental disorders. So 
enlightened a man as Sir Thomas Browne 
declares more than once his belief in witches 
and their influence; Burton's "Anatomy of 
1 I. Samuel, xvi., 14. 



HISTORICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 9 

Melancholy" asserts that melancholy can be 
caused and cured by witches ; the learned James, 
King of England, and Edward Coke, who lived 
at the same time, both take up the legal aspects, 
stating that the plea of insanity offered on 
behalf of witches should not be recognised at 
the legal tribunal. In Middleton's "Witch" 
(i., 2), there is a mention of "solanum somni- 
ferum" (otherwise known as Deadly Nightshade 
or Atropa Belladonna) which was the chief 
ingredient in many witches' recipes and pro- 
duced hallucinations and other abnormal states 
of mind. Banquo, in Shakespeare's " Macbeth," 
probably refers to the witches' influence when 
he enquires, directly after the first meeting with 

them : 

" Have we eaten on the insane root 
That takes the reason prisoner? " i 

A counterpart to the idea of possession by 
demons is found in a belief, common at this 
time and earlier, in the inspired utterances of 
the frenzied prophetess. Neither here nor with 
the witches was any curative treatment under- 
taken. For with the oracle no such treatment 
was thought to be necessary or even advisable, 
and with the witches none except death was 
supposed to avail. Occasionally a "witch" 
might be subjected, like other mad folk, to 
" chains " and " whips," but the road more often 

1 "Macbeth," i., 3,84. 



10 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

taken was the short one. In simple cases of 
demoniacal possession the means of cure was 
patent : the demon must be cast out and the 
patient will return to his right mind. The 
exorcisation of the "conjuror" was commonly 
accompanied by pseudo-medical treatment, the 
nature of which will presently appear. 

Now the influence of the demonological con- 
ception of insanity is clearly seen in our dramas. 
Everyone is familiar, to go no farther than 
Shakespeare, with the famous exorcisation scene 
in "Twelfth Night,"' where the clown, dis- 
guised as " Sir Topas the curate," comes to visit 
"Malvolio the lunatic," and drives out the 
"hyperbolical fiend" which is supposed to vex 
him. Everything Malvolio does can be expressed 
in terms of Satan. When the wretched man 
speaks, it is the "fiend" speaking "hollow" 
within him. His disgusted exclamation when 
Maria urges him to " say his prayers " is con- 
strued into the fiend's repugnance to things 
sacred. Fabian advises " no way (of treatment) 
but gentleness . . . the fiend is rough and 
will not be roughly used." While Sir Toby pro- 
tests that it is " not for gravity to play at cherry- 
pit with Satan ; hang him, foul collier." A more 
complete and far more famous illustration may 
be found in "Lear,"^ where Edgar attributes 
his assumed madness to possession by the 

1 " Twelfth Night," iv., 2. 2 " King Lear," ill., 4, etc. 



HISTORICAIi PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 11 

various spirits which he names. Almost his 
first words in his disguise tell of the ** foul fiend " 
leading him ** through fire and through flame, 
through ford and whirlpool, o'er hog and quag- 
mire."^ He names "the foul Flibhertigibbet," 
the fiend of " mopping and mowing,"^ who *' gives 
the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes 
the harelip;"^ of "the prince of darkness . . . 
a gentleman; Modo he's called and Mahu";^ of 
"Hobbididence prince of dumbness;" of "Hoppe- 
dance " who " cries in Tom's belly for two white 
herring"' and many others — culled from the 
flowery page of Harsnet's " Popish Impostures.'* 

A more modern idea of insanity is that which 
attributes it to natural physical causes, and this 
finds expression in our dramas — often in the 
same play — side by side with the conception just 
mentioned. The capriciousness of heredity, for 
instance, is recognised by the author of " A Fair 
Quarrel": 
" Wise men beget fools and fools are the fathers 

To many wise children . . . 

A great scholar may beget an idiot, 

And from the ploughtail may come a great scholar." 6 

The supposed justice of the same law is illus- 
trated by a passage in Brome's " English Moor," 
where among punishments for sin is included : 
"That his base offspring proves a natural idiot." 

1 " King Lear," iii., 4, 52, etc. 4 Ibid., iii., 4, 148-9. 

2 Ibid., iv., 1, 64. 3 Ibid,, iii., 5, 31. 

3 Ibid., iii., 4, 122. 

6 Middleton: "A Fair Quarrel," i., 1. 



12 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

One of the most popular of the physical 
causes assigned hy seventeenth century drama- 
tists to madness is the worm in the brain. 
"Madam," says Arcadius in Shirley's "Corona- 
tion," " my uncle is something craz'd ; there is a 
worm in's brain." ^ Shirley frequently refers to 
this particular "cause," and Winfield, one of the 
characters in "The Ball," adds to it another super- 
stition when he says: "He has a worm in's brain, 
which some have suppos'd at some time o' the 
moon doth ravish him into perfect madness." '^ 

Superstition is responsible for many of the 
" causes " of madness in our drama, and among 
these the most prominent is probably the 
superstition responsible for the English word 
" lunatic." The supposed influence of the moon 
on insanity and of its deviations on the recur- 
rence of maniacal periods is clearly the source 
of those words which Shakespeare gives to 
Othello after the murder of Desdemona: 
"It is the very error of the moon; 

She comes more nearer earth than she was wont 

And makes men mad. "3 

So Lollio, in "The Changeling," tells Franciscus 
that "Luna" made him mad.* The "parson" 
who figures, too, among the mad folk in "The 
Pilgrim," has to be "tied short" since "the 
moon's i' th' full."^ 

1 iii., 2. 2 i., 1. 3 " Othello," v., 2, 109. 

* iii., 3. 5 iii., 6. Cf. with these the phrases : " planet- 
struck," "planet-stricken," etc.; e.g. Brome's " City Wit," 
v., 1 — Crazy: "Sure I was planet-struck." 



HISTORICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 13 

That the superstition connected with the 
moon, however, was under high medical patron- 
age is shewn by a reference to the "Anatomie 
of the Bodie of Man" by one Yicary, chief 
surgeon at St. Bartholomew's Hospital (1548- 
1562). "Also the Brayne " (he writes) '*hath 
this propertie that it moveth and followeth the 
moving of the moone ; for in the waxing of the 
moone the brayne discendeth downwarde and 
vanisheth in substance of vertue ; for then the 
Brayne shrinketh together in itselfe and is not 
so fully obedient to the spirit of feeling, and 
this is proved in men that be lunaticke or 
madde . . . that be moste greeved in the 
beginning of the newe moone and in the latter 
quarter of the moone. Wherefore when it 
happeneth that the Brayne is either too drye 
or too moyst, then can it not werke his kinde ; 
then are the spirits of life melted and resolved 
away, and then foloweth feebleness of the wittes 
and of al other members of the bodie, and at 
the laste death." 

The word " lunatic " itself, it may be noted, 
quickly passed into common speech, and was 
used without reference to its original signifi- 
cance. We shall find it constantly recurring 
throughout this study, but as there is little 
variety in its use, no further examples need be 
quoted. 

An interesting superstition is connected with 



14 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

the mandrake plant, round which, from the 
supposed resemblance of its strangely cleft root 
to the human figure, many weird notions have 
gathered. One of these was that when torn 
from the ground, the plant would utter groans 
of ** sad horror," which, if heard, caused instant 
madness, or even death/ From the numerous 
references to this superstition in Elizabethan 
drama may be extracted two, — the first from 
"Romeo and Juliet" (iv., 3. 47-8), where Juliet 
speaks of 

" shrieks of mandrakes, torn out of the earth 
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad " ; 

the second from a speech of Suffolk's in 

"2 Henry VI." (iii., 2, 310), where the Duke 

reminds the Queen that curses will not kill 

*' as doth the mandrake's groan." 

Other causes to which, rightly or wrongly, 

insanity is attributed may be grouped together 

for convenience. In the " Emperor of the East " 

is an obvious reminiscence of Holy Writ where 

Flaccilla says of Pulcheria : 

'* Grant heaven, your too much learning 
Does not conclude in madness." 2 

1 For further information on this subject BuUeine's 
"Bulwark of Defence" and Sir Thomas Browne's " Vulgar 
Errors ' ' may be consulted. 

2 Act. iii. Sc. iv., cf. Jonson: "The Alchemist," ii., i. 
Face of Dol : 

" She is a most rare scholar, 
And is gone mad with studying Broughton's works. 
If you but name a word touching the Hebrew 
She falls into her fit and will discourse 
So learnedly of genealogies, 
As you would run mad, too, to hear her, sir." 



HISTORICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 15 

This devout wish, however, has only about as 
much claim to be taken seriously as Leonato's 
fear that Benedick and Beatrice, married a week, 
would "talk themselves mad."^ 

Such causes as irritation, worry, jealousy and 
persecution are frequently mentioned as con- 
ducing to frenzy, if not actually causing it. 
The Abbess of the "Comedy of Errors," re- 
proaching Adriana for her treatment of Anti- 
pholus, sums the matter up thus : 
" The venom clamours of a jealous woman 

Poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. 

It seems his sleeps were hinder' d by thy railing, 

And thereof comes it that his head is light. 

Thou say'st his meat was sauced with thy upbraidings : 

Unquiet meals make ill digestions ; 

Thereof the raging fire of fever bred ; 

And what's a fever but a fit of madness? 

Thou say'st his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls : 

Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue 

But moody and dull melancholy . . . 

The consequence is then thy jealous fits 

Have scared thy husband from the use of wits." 2 

We need not stay long over the numerous 
characters who speak of anger as leading to 
madness. The term "horn-mad," however, is 
sufficiently interesting to be cleared up here.^ 

It is used in two senses. Often it is no more 
than an emphatic way of expressing the simple 
adjective. In this sense it may be connected 

1 " Much Ado About Nothing," ii., 1, 368. 
Z " Comedy of Errors," v., 1, 68. 

3 For further information on this interesting word see 
the New English Dictionary, s.v. " horn-mad." 



16 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

with the Scottish word "harns," meaning 
"brains," an alternative form being "horn- 
wood." When Joculo, in Day's " Law Tricks," 
suggests that "the better half of the towns- 
men will run horn-mad,"* this is clearly the 
sense in which the words are to be taken. But 
in another sense, the source of which is evident, 
" horn-mad " is the word used to denote a kind 
of madness unknown as a technical term to the 
medical profession, but very common in the less 
elevated portions of our drama. This madness 

is a thing 

"Created 
Of woman's making and her faithless vows ' ' ; 

the madness, in a word, of the cuckold. Falstaff 
seems to be punning on the two senses of the 
term when he says : " If I have horns to make 
me mad, let the proverb go with me : I'll be 
horn mad."^ Dekker exhibits an especial 
fondness for this particular pun. Cordolente, 
the shopkeeper of "Match Me in London," 
whose wife the King has seduced, says on being 
informed by that monarch that he is mad : 
" I am indeed horn-mad. O me ! In the holiest 
place of the Kingdom have I caught my un- 
doing."® Similar passages can be found in 
nearly all Dekker's plays, whether true mad- 
ness is actually in question or not. 

1 *' Law Tricks," iv., 2. 

2 " Merry Wives of Windsor," iii., 6, 153. 

3 '• Match Me in London," iv., 1. 



HISTOBICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 17 

A world of meaning lies beneath such 
phrases as "dog-madness," "midsummer mad- 
ness," "March mad," "as mad as May butter."* 
The first refers primarily to hydrophobia, though 
it is not always used in that sense ; the second 
is accounted for by the old belief that insanity 
was fiercest and most prevalent in midsummer. 
The phrase " March mad " is connected with the 
saying "As mad as a March hare." Its explana- 
tion is that during the month of March, their 
breeding season, hares are wilder than usual. 
An example of the use of the phrase might be 
quoted from Drayton's (non-dramatic) work, 
"Nymphidia": 

" Oberon . . . Grew mad as any hare 

When he had sought each place with care 

And found his queen was missing." 

"May butter" is unsalted butter, preserved 
during May for medicinal use in healing wounds. 
The connexion of the phrase with madness, how- 
ever, is so deep as to be no longer understood ! 

Finally, among the causes of madness 
recognised in the seventeenth century must 
be mentioned melancholy, though we shall have 
to return to this on another page. The common 
belief appears to have been, in the words of the 
Doctors of the Induction to the "Taming of 
the Shrew," that " Melancholy is the nurse of 
frenzy,"^ and incipient melancholiacs are con- 

1 All taken from plays of the period under consideration. 

2 " Taming of the Shrew," Ind. ii., 135. 

c 



18 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

stantly adjured by their nearest and dearest to 

remember this fact — though their adjurations 

seldom have any effect. The Duchess of Malfi, 

indeed, hearing in her captivity a "hideous 

noise," and being told : 

** 'Tis the wild consort 
Of madmen, lady, whom your tyrant brother 
Hath placed about your lodging," 

replies : 

" Indeed, I thank him ; nothing but noise and folly 
Can keep me in my right wits ; whereas reason 
And silence make me mad." i 

In the " Lover's Melancholy," Prince Palador is 
presented with a " Masque of Melancholy " (for 
which the author was largely indebted to 
Burton) in order that his diseased mind may 
be relieved. These two cases certainly shew 
a divergence from the more general opinion. 
The first may perhaps be attributed to the 
Duchess' desire: "to make a virtue of neces- 
sity," the second to the fact that Palador's 
disease is not true melancholia, but a state of 
mind bordering on affectation — that melancholy 
affected by more than one of Shakespeare's 
*' humorous " characters, of whom it can be said; 
" You may call it melancholy if you will favour 
the man, but by my head 'tis pride." '^ 

We may gather next, from our plays, some of 
the recognised symptoms of insanity in these 

1 " Duchess of Malfl," iv., 2. 

2 " Troilus and Cressida," ii., 3, 92. 



HISTOKICAL PKESENTATION OF MADNESS 19 

early times. Epicene, pretending to recognise 
the madness of Morose, says : " Lord, how idly 
he talks, and how his eyes sparkle ! he looks 
green about the temples ! do you see what blue 
spots he has ? " Clerimont has his answer ready : 
"Ay, 'tis melancholy."^ But these two are over- 
frivolous ; their diagnosis is untrustworthy ; we 
must turn to surer ground. One supposed sign 
of madness was evidently the quickening of the 
heart and the pulse. Hamlet, in a well-known 
passage, ridicules his mother's idea that the 
ghost which he sees is due to "ecstasy": 

"Ecstasy! 
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, 
And makes as healthful music." 2 

Philaster, declaring his sanity to Arethusa, 

says: 

" Take this sword 
And search how temperate a heart I have . . ." 

and again : 

"... Am I raging now? 
If I were mad, I should desire to live. 
i Sir, feel my pulse, whether have you known 

I A man in a more equal tune to die." 

Bellario replies : 

" Alas, my lord, your pulse keeps madman's time I 
So does your tongue." 

That these tests were inadequate is proved by 
/ a simple illustration— in the "Comedy of Errors," 

' 1 "Epicene," iv., 2. 

2 " Hamlet," ui., 4, 139, etc. 

3 •' PhUaster," iv., 3, 45, etc. 



20 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

Pinch the exorcist, mistakes Antipholus' anger 
for madness. Luciana cries : 

" Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks ! " 
And a courtezan, 

" Mark, how he trembles in his ecstasy ! " i 
Pinch attempts to feel the "madman's " pulse, 
but in any case he knows that both man and 
master are possessed : 

*' I know it by their pale and deadly looks." 2 

The madman was supposed not to be aware 

of the nature of his disease. " That proves you 

mad," says the Officer in Dekker's "Honest 

Whore," by a strange piece of reasoning, " because 

you know it not."^ Throughout the plays occurs 

the same phenomenon. Even when certain of 

the mad folk recognise that they are afflicted 

with some sort of disease, they resent questioning 

on it. Guildernstern's account of Hamlet is 

significant of a large number of cases : 

" Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, 
But with a crafty madness, keeps aloof 
When we would bring him on to some confession 
Of his true state." 4 

The resentment is no doubt due to a sub 

conscious wish of the madman to hide his Iosj 

of that sense of personal identity which is usee. 

by Shakespeare as one of the criteria of madness 

Constance' proof to Pandulph of her entire 

sanity will be remembered : 

1 " Comedy of Errors," iv., 4, 52-3. a Ibid., 1. 96. 

3 '• Honest Whore," iv., 3. * " Hamlet," iii., 1, 7. 



HISTOEICAL PEESENTATION OP MADNESS 21 

" I am not mad ; this hair I tear is mine. 
My name is Constance ; I was Geffrey's wife; 
Young Arthur is my son and he is lost : 
I am not madi . . ." 

Sebastian, in " Twelfth Night," gives similar 

evidence : 

" This is the air ; that is the glorious sun ; 
This pearl she gave me. I do feel't and see't ; 
And though 'tis wonder that enwraps me thus, 
Yet 'tis not madness. "2 

Another symptom of insanity was sleeping 
with open eyes. Meleander, in the "Lover's 
Melancholy," " sleeps . . . with eyes open, 
and that's no good sign " ^ and the Duchess of 
Malfi is said to sleep " like a madman, with (her) 
eyes open."^ 

A general wildness of demeanour was thought 
to be characteristic of both the earlier and the 
later stages of madness. Songs and dances are 
often associated with it; wild laughter, *'the 
usher to a violent extremity," accompanied by 
fulminations against the world in general; 
bitter sarcasm, sudden touches of pathos and 
consequent outbursts of anger ; " thundering " 
and "roaring," which can only be checked by 
like excesses on the part of others — these are all 
common symptoms, together with " raving " on 
all kinds of subjects. This wildness, however, 

1 " King John," iii., 4, 48, etc. 

2 " Twelfth Night," iv., 3, 1, etc. 

3 '* Lover's Melancholy," ii., 2. 
* "Duchess of Malfi," iv., 2. 



22 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

is not inconsistent with considerable force and 
pregnancy of speech, which might lead some to 
doubt the actual presence of insanity ; and which 
is " a happiness that often madness hits on, 
which reason and sanity could not so pros- 
perously be delivered of."^ A sense of physical 
pain, of being " cut to the brains," might also 
afflict the patient; and the disease frequently 
causes such suffering that 

" Nor the exterior nor the inward man 
Resembles that it was. "2 

An excellent objective description of a single 
case is furnished by the " Gentleman " in " Ham- 
let " who announces the frenzy of Ophelia : 

" She speaks much of her father ; says she hears 
There's tricks i' the world, and hems and beats her heart ; 
Spurns enviously at straws ; speaks things in doubt, 
That carry but half sense ; her speech is nothing, 
Yet the unshaped use of it doth move 
The hearers to collection ; they aim at it, 
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts ; 
Which as her winks and nods and gestures yield them 
Indeed would make one think there might be thought, 
Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily. "3 

As to the nature of the madman's talk, we 
find it impossible to generalise, and the ideas of 
different authors on what it should be have not 
much agreement, beyond the one condition that 
there should be wanting what Shakespeare aptly 
calls "a dependency of thing on thing." This 

1 "Hamlet," ii., 2, 212. 

2 Ibid., ii., 2, 6-7. 

3 Ibid., iv., 5, 4, etc. 



HISTORICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 23 

will be noted more particularly when we come 
to the study of individual characters. 

From these symptoms and others which might 
be cited it will be evident that the madness of 
our dramas is far from being confined to one 
type. We know that various kinds of insanity 
were recognised in the seventeenth century. 
CoraXjthe physician of the "Lover's Melancholy," 

makes it clear that 

"Ecstasy 
Fantastic Dotage, Madness, Frenzy, Rapture 
Of mere imagination differ partly 
From Melancholy."! 

Our learned informant, Ben Jonson, diagnoses 
another case of insanity as "the disease in 
Greek . . . called /xa via, in Latin, insania, 
furor, vel ecstasis melancholica, that is egressio, 
when a man ex melancholico evadit fanaticus, 
. . . . But he may be but * phreneticus,' yet, 
mistress, and * phrenesis ' is only * delirium ' or 
so.'"^ And indeed there are all varieties of 
insanity in the plays before us. There is the 
young person who merely talks " fantastically," 
" like a justice of peace," " of a thousand matters 
and all to no purpose,"^ and whose words 
" though they (lack) form a little," are " not like 
madness."* There is the person dominated by 
the " idee fixe " — examples differing widely occur 
in "King Lear" and in "Bartholomew Fair." 

1 '* Lover's Melancholy," iii., 1. 2 " Epicene," iv., 2. 
3 •* Honest Whore," v., 1. 4 "Hamlet," iii., 1, 171. 



24 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

There is the " idiot " and there is the " imbecile " 
— two types between which it would be affecta- 
tion here to attempt a discrimination. The 
melancholiac, one of " sundry kinds," affected 
by a ** mere commotion of the mind, o'ercharged 
with fear and sorrow,"' is one of the commonest 
types. Mania and delusional insanity are also 
frequent and account for a large proportion of 
our characters. Yet, since this is not a medical 
treatise, how can we distinguish any more 
finely? We shall do better not to attempt a 
more detailed classification of our mad folk than 
this, which will be utilised later in the conside- 
ration of individual characters. **It is not as 
deep as a well, nor as wide as a church-door, but 
'twill serve." Like more than one of those 
Elizabethan playwrights we may feel that : 

** To define true madness 
What is't but to be nothing else but mad? "2 

On this let us act and employ a literary rather 
than a medical criticism. 

Our dramas are not silent as to the way in 
which lunatics were regarded by the world at 
large. Few people at that time had the sym- 
pathy of Langland for those whom, three 
hundred years before, he beautifully called "God's 
minstrels " — a title explained by the preceding 
exhortation to his readers to bestow their gifts on 
the wandering insane as bountifully as though 

1 ♦' Lover's Melancholy," iii., 1. 2 " Hamlet," ii., 2, 93. 



HISTORICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 25 

they were wandering minstrels. For the most 
part the lunatic seems to have been regarded, 
when confined, as a negligible factor in every- 
day life/ and when at large as a harmless and a 
gratuitous amusement. So, as has just been 
noted, the Duchess of Malfi is regaled before her 
death with ** some sport " in the shape of several 
madmen who sing and dance before her. Here, 
of course, the intention is a sinister one, but 
there is no sinister meaning in a casual remark 
let fall by Truewit in the " Silent Woman "— 
** Mad folks and other strange sights to be seen 
daily, private, and public"!'^ Nor is there any 
idea but one of legitimate amusement in the 
entertainment organised by the master of a 
private asylum, Alibius by name, for the 
marriage of Beatrice- Joanna (in "The Change- 
ling ") and given, as he says, by : 

" A mixture of our madmen and our fools, 
To finish, as it were, and make the fag 
Of all the revels, the third night from the first." 3 

Isabella caustically remarks " Madmen and fools 
are a staple commodity." 

In this connexion, a particular class of lunatic 
deserves notice. The Bedlam beggar, variously 
known as "bedlamer," *' bedlamite," and "Abra- 
ham's man," was originally an inmate of Bedlam, 
but, coming to be regarded as convalescent, had 

1 e.g. A lunatic's legal acts were annulled and his pro- 
perty was placed under control. (See further, Encyl. Brit., 
8.V. Insanity.) 

2 •' Epicene," ii., 1. 3 " The Changeling," iii., 3. 



26 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

been set free and would roam about the country, 
half-crazed, living for the most part on the charity 
of such as would befriend him. In Dekker's 
" Belman of London," a non-dramatic work pro- 
fessing to expose " The most notorious Villanies 
that are now Practised in the Kingdome," is a 
long description, in the manner of a seventeenth 
century "character," of one of "those Wild-geese 
or Hayre-braynes . . . called Abraham's men." 
Dekker at least has little good to say of them. 
" The fellow . . . sweares he hath bin in bed- 
lam and will talke frantickly of purpose: you see 
pinnes stuck in sundry places of his naked flesh, 
especially in his armes, which paine he gladly 
puts himselfe to (beeing indeede no torment 
at all, his skin is either so dead, with some fowls 
disease, or so hardned with weather), onely to 
make you believe he is out of his wits : he calls 
himself by the name of Poore Tom, and comming 
neere anybody, cryes out Poore Tom is a-cold 
. . . ." The mind at once turns to Edgar and 
the celebrated lines where he poses as one of 
those very "Abraham-men": 

" This country gives me proof and precedent 
Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, 
Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms 
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary ; 
And with this horrible object, from low farms, 
Poor pelting villages, sheep cotes, and mills, 
Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers 
Enforce their charity."! 

1 " King Lear," ii., 3, 13, etc. 



HISTORICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 27 

From all that we can gather, however, of the 
treatment of the insane in madhouses of the 
time, it would seem probable that, among those 
released or escaping from them, many would 
still be genuine lunatics. At the same time, it 
was no doubt fairly easy to make a living in the 
way Dekker describes, and numbers of beggars 
must have emulated Edgar's behaviour from far 
less worthy motives. 

Such a lack of popular sympathy could hardly 
go hand-in-hand with a peculiarly humanitarian 
treatment of the insane. The Saxon treatment 
of lunatics has been described as "a curious 
compound of pharmacy, superstition, and casti- 
gation." In the seventeenth century it had been 
but little improved upon. Its most charac- 
teristic feature was confinement in a dark room, 
with additional treatment, varying according 
to circumstances. A book, of date 1542, called 
"A Compendious Pygment or a Dyetry of 
Helth " by one Dr. Borde, advises the keeping of 
lunatics in a dark room, provided with no knives, 
girdles, nor pictures of man or woman on the 
wall. Few words are to be used except in gentle 
reproofs and the dietary is to be careful and 
ample. Dr. Borde's treatment was enlarged 
upon in later days ; chains were used to prevent 
escape ; castigation was employed freely and 
often attended with great cruelty. A quatrain 
in Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" (1621), 



28 ELIZABETHAN DEAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

confirms this statement, presenting what is 
indeed a ghastly picture. It is all borne out by 
the dramatic references, which are extremely 
numerous. The lunatic chez lui is evidently 
a subject which appeals to the dramatist : mad- 
ness and its cure become topics of ordinary 
conversation. Rpsalind, in playful banter with 
Orlando, compares love to " a madness," which 
" deserves as well a dark house and a whip as 
madmen do ; and the reason why they are not 
so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so 
ordinary that the whippers are in love too."* 
Leonato, in " Much Ado " talks (from our point 
of view ominously) of those who would 

•* Give preceptial medicine to rage, 
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread, 
Charm ache with air and agony with words." 2 

Shakespeare is not predicting here, as has been 
suggested, the application of gentle methods to 
insanity, but ridiculing those who were so foolish 
as to apply " a moral medicine to a mortifying 
mischief." Even as he wrote lightly of the 
silken thread, he would have heard in imagi- 
nation the clank of the lunatic's chains. 

Another addition to the attractions of the 
asylum was the course of slow starvation, and 
this is hinted at in a casual allusion by Romeo 
in " Romeo and Juliet " ; 

1 "As You Like It," iii., 2, 420, etc. 

2 •♦ Much Ado About Nothing," v., 1, 24, etc. 



HISTORICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 29 

"Why Romeo, art thou mad?" asks Benvolio. 

"Not mad," answers Roraeo, "but bound more 
than a madman is. 
Shut up in prison, kept without my food, 
Whipped and tormented." i 

Pinch the conjuror knows what to do in 

cases of madness : 

'* Mistress, both man and master is possess'd . . . 
They must be bound and laid in some dark room." 

George, in "The Honest Whore," has heard of 
domestic cures: "'Sfoot! I have known many 
women that have had mad rascals to their hus- 
bands, whom they would belabour by all means 
possible to keep 'em in their right wits." And 
a character in Marston's "What You Will " speaks 
in a delightfully brisk and business-like manner : 
" Shut the windows, darken the room, fetch 
whips ; the fellow is mad, he raves, he raves — 
talks idly — lunatic." 

Few tests were needed to convince the keepers 
of an asylum that their patient was mad, and if 
it could be made a matter of pecuniary advantage 
to them to incarcerate any person, they would 
often take him and clothe him in the "fool's 
coat" or clap him into the "madman's cage" 
without making too many inquiries. Thus the 
madhouse became, in many a sinister sense, 
*'a house of correction to whip us into our 
senses."^ 

1 " Romeo and Juliet," i., 2, 54, etc. 

2 Shirley : "Bird in a Cage," ii., 1. 



30 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

Before we leave the historical side of our 
subject, some mention must be made of the 
famous Bedlam, so often mentioned in con- 
nexion with the mad folk of our plays. The 
real and original Bedlam, "Bethlem monas- 
tery," as it is called, "the madman's pound," 
which is actually introduced into one or more 
of the plays under consideration,* was formerly 
the Hospital of St. Mary Bethlehem in Bishops- 
gate Street. The Priory was founded for this 
Order in 1247 by an ex-sheriff named Simon 
Fitz-Mary. It passed through many vicissi- 
tudes, chief among which were a seizure by the 
Crown in 1375 and the dissolution by Henry VIII. 
in 1547. After this latter date the revenues were 
held by the Mayor, the commonalty and the 
citizens of London. For some hundred and fifty 
years the Hospital had been used for lunatics, 
and the only difference in this use caused by 
its dissolution as a religious house seems to 
have been that it became incorporated as a 
Royal Foundation. For a considerable time it 
suffered through poverty, being largely depen- 
dent on legacies, such as Sir Thomas Gresham's 
in 1575, and on general alms. Mistress Traine- 
well, in Brome's " Northern Lass " (1632), 
mentions Bedlam among other objects of 
charity, and suggests to Squelch an excellent 

1 Notably into "Northward Ho." The madhouses of "The 
Pilgrim," " The Honest Whore," and " The Changeling " are 
private asylums. 



HISTOEICAL PBESENTATION OF MADNESS 31 

reason for patronising it. The passage may be 
quoted in full: 

Squelch : " I will now bestow my wealth in monumental 
good deeds, and charitable uses in my life-time, to 
be talked well on when I am dead." 
Trainewell: "Yes, build almshouses and hospitals for 
beggars, and provide in Bridewell houses of correc- 
tion for your friends and kindred. Pray give enough 
to Bedlam, you may feel some part of that benefit 
yourself before you die, if these fits hold you." 
The later history of Bedlam is uneventful, and, 
to us, unimportant. In 1676 it was transferred 
to London Wall, the new buildings being known 
as the "New Hospital of Bethlehem," and in 
1815 to Lambeth. Bethlem Hospital was by 
far the best known of London mad-houses in 
the Seventeeth Century; two more are men- 
tioned by Stow in his " Survey of London," and 
may be noted here. The first was "an Hospitall 
in the Parish of Barking Church," founded " by 
Robert Denton Chaplen, for the sustentation of 
poore Priests, and other both men and women, 
that were sicke of the Phrenzie, there to 
remaine till they were perfectly whole, and 
restored to good memorie." ^ In another place, 
under the title of '*An house belonging to 
Bethlem," we read : " Then had ye an house 
wherein sometime were distraught and lunatike 
people, of what antiquity founded, or by whom 
I have not read, neither of the suppression, but 
it was said that sometime a King of England, 
1 stow : " Survey of London " (Clarendon Press), 1., 137. 



32 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

not liking such a kind of people to remaine so 
neare his pallace, caused them to be remoued 
farther of, to Bethlem without Bishops gate of 
London, and to that Hospitall the said house 
by Charing crosse doth yet remaine." * 

No doubt there were also private asylums in 
existence, where the treatment of the patients 
was harsh, and their comforts were few. The 
conditions, indeed, seem to have been very 
similar to those of Bedlam. These and other 
details may be gathered chiefly from four plays, 
in each of which there are "madhouse scenes" — 
they are "The Pilgrim" by John Fletcher, "The 
Honest Whore" by Thomas Dekker, "North- 
ward Ho," the joint work of Dekker and 
Webster, and "The Changeling," ascribed to 
Middleton, who was probably aided in it by 
Rowley. A comparison of these plays should 
give a very fair account of a seventeenth century 
lunatic asylum.'^ 

It is not difficult to obtain admission to this 
asylum, for the charge is only a penny or 
twopence, and Bellamont and his friends in 
" Northward Ho " look at the " mad Greeks " for 
a short time before calling for their horses, 
which are stabled at " the Dolphin without 

1 Ibid., ii., 98. 

2 The chief sources from which this description is com- 
piled are:—" The Pilgrim," iii. 6, iv. 3, v. 5 ; " The Honest 
Whore," v. 12, 13 ; " The Changeling," i. 2, iii. 3, iv. 3, v. 3 ; 
"Northward Ho," iv. 1. For obvious reasons the specific 
references to every quotation are not given. 



HISTORICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 33 

Bishopsgate" near by. The hospital consists 
of *' a parlour, kitchen, and larder below stairs, 
and twenty-one rooms where the poor distracted 
people lie, and above stairs eight rooms more 
for servants " ; the madmen may either be 
visited in their cells, or brought in for inspec- 
tion by the visitors. Preferring the former 
alternative we approach the cells, and hear a 
confused roaring — ** the Chimes of Bedlam." It 
is " Mad Bess roaring for meat or the English- 
man for drink"; like "bells rung backward" 
they are nothing but " confusion and mere 
noises." The ** shaking of irons " adds to the 
din, which is increased by the snatches of 
coarse song which are continually assailing our 
ears, the playing of rough games such as 
"barley-break," the running and jumping of 
the more violent of the patients, and the cries 
of those who are undergoing a treatment of the 

whip : 

"If sad, they cry, 
If mirth be their conceit, they laugh again ; 
Sometimes they imitate the beasts and birds, 
Singing or howling, braying, barking, all 
As their wild fancies prompt 'em." 

When the lunatics are brought in, or (as was 
more usual in real life though unsuited for 
dramatic representation), we visit them in their 
** cages " or cells, we are confronted with a 
strange sight. A " pretty poet " who " ran mad 
for a chambermaid " invokes Titania and Oberon, 



34 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

and speaks in the sanest of tones of "daisies, 
primrose, violets " ; his madness, though at the 
time we do not know it, is feigned. The English- 
man is still crying for drink. Everyone must 
go down on his knees and pledge him : " A 
thousand pots, and froth 'em, froth 'em ! " The 
parson, "that run mad for tithe goslings," 
threatens to excommunicate and curse the 
whole company. A musician walks slowly and 
deliberately apart ; he fell mad " for love of an 
Italian dwarf." Many a lunatic resembles 
Candido, " much gone indeed," who believes him- 
self to be a prentice, " talks to himself," selling 
*'pure calicos, fine hollands, choice cambrics, 
neat lawns," and resenting interference in a way 
which is positively dangerous. Near him is a 
lad brought in (like Alinda) "a little craz'd, 
distracted" and not suffering acutely; he is 
allowed comparative freedom and accorded light 
treatment till more dangerous symptoms shew 
themselves. He 

•'talks little idly 
And therefore has the freedom of the house." 

We speak to the keepers about their charges, 
and they seem mildly interested. The most 
entertaining characters we may discuss at 
length with them ; and, if we will brave their 
foul talk, we may even converse with the patients 
as freely as they are permitted to converse with 
each other. We must be prepared, in this case. 



HISTOEICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 35 

to hear frank comments on our personal appear- 
ance and the wildest of guesses, often mere 
expressions of an idee fixe on our profession 
or our business. The lunatics will not, of course, 
allow that they are mad, though they may recog- 
nise that they are ill and under a doctor's care. 
This, however, is less common with our asylum 
patients than with those undergoing private 
treatment, such as Ford's Meleander. The mere 
suggestion that they may be of unsound mind 
usually amuses them, or makes them indignant. 
It is only when the keeper ceases to reproach 
them with madness and turns the conversation 
to " Whips ! " that they become serious again. 
Perhaps, after all, a talk with the keeper will 
best serve our purpose. 

Friar Anselmo is at hand and will describe 
to us with more sympathy than many of his 
kind the condition of the inmates : 

" There are of madmen, as there are of tame, 
All humoured not alike. We have here some 
So apish and fantastic, play with a feather ; 
And, though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image 
So blemished and defaced, yet they do act 
Such antic and such pretty lunacies, 
That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile. 
Others, again, we have, like hungry lions, 
Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies ; 
And these have oftentimes from strangers' sides 
Snatch'd rapiers suddenly and done much harm ; 
Whom if you'll see, you must be weaponless." 

We may ask him about his treatment of these 
poor creatures, who are ever in fear of the lash. 



36 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

It will be easily justified : 

" They must be used like children ; pleased with toys, 
And anon whipt for their unruliness." 

Alternate cajolings and threats are the mildest 
form of treatment that we can hope to see in 
these places. The Elizabethan asylum keeper 
holds with Shakespeare that 

" Diseases desperate grown 

By desperate appliance are relieved 

Or not at all." 
In the middle of this entertaining discussion 
we are interrupted. A prospective patient, it 
seems, is being announced, but the first words 
of the Master, who enters with him, suggest 
that we have been fortunate enough to meet 
with a case of false incarceration. A scholarly 
young man has been confined without cause and 
his friends in high quarters have come, armed 
with a "discharge from my lord cardinal," to 
demand his release. " I am heartily sorry," 
says the Master, " If ye allow him sound, pray 
take him with ye." A gentleman protests that 
there is nothing in the Scholar 

'* light nor tainted, 
No startings nor no rubs in all his answers ; 
In all his letters nothing but discretion, 
Learning and handsome style." 
He is quite " perfect " ; "a civiler discourser I 
ne'er talked with." Then, before the Master, 
the Scholar is catechised : 

" You find no sickness ? " " Do ye sleep o' 
nights ? " " Have you no fearful dreams ? " The 



HISTOKICAL PKESENTATION OF MADNESS 37 

answers, to the Master's disgust, are satisfactory. 
" I think," exclaims the friend, ** You keep him 
here to teach him madness. But, just then, his 
" eyes alter," and 

" On a sudden, from some word or other. 
When no man could expect a fit, he has flown out." 

The mention of " stubborn weather " and 
"strange work at sea," starts in him a new 
delusion or revives an old one. He rants and 
raves : " I am Neptune." Now it is the Master's 
turn to jeer, and the visitors retire, discomfited. 
It may be noticed, in passing, that the ques- 
tions addressed by the keepers of madhouses 
to prospective patients in order to ascertain 
whether or no they are indeed mad are hardly 
less irrelevant and absurd than those of ** Sir 
Topas " in " Twelfth Night." Antonio, in the 
"Changeling," is asked as "easy questions": 
" How many true (i.e. honest) fingers has a 
tailor on his right hand?" . . . "and how 
many on both ? " — " How many fools goes to a 
wise man ? " These remind us of the questions 
put by the Fool to King Lear. 

Our madhouse does not contain only those 
lunatics who are termed "madmen"; there is 
another variety, known most commonly as the 
"fool." Now the word "fool," in Elizabethan 
literature, has a number of connotations. It 
may be used, as in Shakespeare, for the pro- 
essional jester of the court, who was, indeed, 



38 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

often a little wanting in ordinary intelligence, 
though this was amply atoned for by his witty 
and pregnant remarks. It is also used in a 
general sense, as to-day, of a person who has 
acted, or who habitually acts, in an unwise way. 
With reference, however, to our plays, it has 
more often approximately the technical meaning 
of '* imbecile " — a term used of those whose 
brains are constitutionally affected and whose 
insanity is therefore rather a quantitative rather 
than a qualitative defect. Taken in this sense, 
the word *' fool " may be applied to some of the 
asylum's inmates, the word "madman" to others. 
The two classes are not always well distinguished 
in these plays, but the fools can generally be 
detected by the inanity, rather than the violence, 
of their words and actions. They tend to reply 
in the style of Antonio, the feigning fool of 
" The Changeling "— 

" He, he, he ! well, I thank you, cousin, he, he, he ! " 
To which Lollio, the attendant, replies: "He can 
laugh ; I perceive by that he is no beast." 

The two classes of patients are apparently 
allowed to mix in each others' company. " We 
have," says Lollio, "two sorts of people in the 
house, and both under the whip, that's fools and 
madmen; the one has not wit enough to be knaves, 
and the other not knavery enough to be fools." 
They are kept under very much the same dis- 
cipline, though the fools are sent to the " Fools* 



HISTORICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 39 

College" — which is an institution of the mad- 
house itself— and are put to school in various 
classes in the hope of improving their wit. 

The seventeenth-century asylum, it must be 
remembered, claims to have worked cures, 
though at first it seems hard to believe that its 
designation as "the school where those that 
lose their wits Practise again to get them " is 
anything more than a phrase. As we enter the 
domain of Anselmo we are met by a " sweeper," 
who describes himself as one of the "imple- 
ments " of the house — " a mad wag myself here 
once ; but I thank father Anselmo, he lashed me 
into my right mind again." 

We are struck at once, as we read these 
accounts of Bedlam, by the inconsequence, 
verging at times on brutal heartlessness, with 
which those responsible for the lunatics' welfare 
refer to them. It is the expression of that 
spirit upon which we have remarked continually 
throughout this historical survey. In concluding 
it we can hardly illustrate this last point better 
than by considering a few of the occasions on 
which the mad folk are held up to ridicule or 
satire. It is, of course, the dramatist with whom 
we have properly to reckon for this, yet he was 
clearly influenced by the attitude of the time, 
and contemporary prose-references endorse the 
spirit of the plays. 

Satire abounds on the coarsest of subjects — 



40 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

that of the "horn-mad" patient — and further 

examples need hardly be given. More interesting 

is the comment of the keeper in the " Pilgrim " 

when a patient enters crying "Give me some 

drink." 

" Oh, there's the Englishman ! . . . 
These English are so malt-mad there's no meddling with 'em ; 
When they have a fruitful year of barley there, 
All the whole island's thus." 

A similar skit follows on the parson above- 
mentioned "that run mad for tithe goslings." 
But Fletcher's best effort in this direction is 
the introduction of the Welshman, who, but for 
his premature exit might have served as quite 
a reasonable understudy for Fluellen. " Whaw, 
Master Keeper," is his first remark, "Give me 
some ceeze and onions, give me some wash brew 
. . . Pendragon was a shentleman, marg 
you, sir. And the organs at Rixum were made 
by revelations: There is a spirit blows the 
bellows, and then they sing." He will "sing, 
dance and do anything," and when the English- 
man and the Scholar challenge him, he threatens 
to " get upon a mountain and call my country- 
men." Dekker, in the " Honest Whore," is able 
to hit the lawyers. There are none of that 
company, he says, among Anselmo's madmen. 
"We dare not let a lawyer come in, for he'll 
make 'em mad faster than we can recover 'em." 
Questioned as to how long it takes to "recover" 
any of the patients, our informant replies that 



HISTOKICAL PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 41 

"An alderman's son will be mad a great while. 
... A whore will hardly come to her wits 
again. A Puritan, there's no hope of him, un- 
less he may pull down the steeple and hang 
himself i' the bell-ropes."* 

1 Another interesting passage, no doubt satirical, but too 
long for quotation at length, occurs in " The Duchess of 
Malfi," Act iv., Sc. 2 : It begins : 

"A mad lawyer and a secular priest 
A doctor that hath forfeited his "wits 
By jealousy," etc., etc. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Peesentation of Madness— fkom the 
Standpoint of Literature. 

"This mirthful comic style 
Makes us at once both serious, and smile." 

(Alex. Brome.) 

The questions which we have now to answer, 
before passing to our main study and considering 
the mad folk as individuals, are two in number. 
The first is a general one : What is the place of 
such a feature as madness in drama? The 
second is more particular: What place does 
madness assume in the body of drama under 
consideration ? Let us take them in this order. 

1. Clearly there is a great difference between 
madness in tragedy and madness in comedy. 
Many of us would hold to the one and empha- 
tically despise the other. At all events, risking 
confusion through an over-complicated scheme 
of sub-division, we shall deal with each sepa- 
rately. 

The representation of madness in tragedy 
might be objected to upon the following grounds : 
If carried out well, it becomes too terrible for 
the stage ; if badly, it is nothing but a ludicrpus 
caricature of greatness. This is at least plausible, 
and the last proposition is evidently true. But 
what of the first ? Is madness really too terrible 

42 



LITERARY PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 43 

for dramatic presentation, or is it not eminently- 
suited to the stage by virtue of its peculiar 
qualities ? 

The critic replies that madness is sheer 
suffering of the most painful sort, that the 
ravings of a noble mind o'erthrown have passed 
the ne plus ultra of the tragic, while the 
babblings of mere imbecility have not reached 
the level of tragedy at all. " Such suffering " 
(he will say), " as is the lot of Lear, should never 
be dwelt upon, much less paraded before crowds, 
and decked out with the tinsel of the stage. 
Think of physical suffering comparable with it, 
if that be possible — for is not mental suffering 
far more terrible and heart-rending than physi- 
cal ? — and you would never talk of putting the 
maniac on the stage. Think of the repulsion 
caused by the blinding of Gloster and the 
murder of Lady Macduff's infant son, — and is 
not the madness of Lear more terrible ? * King 
Lear ' is, of course, a brilliant exception, but the 
exception proves the rule." 

With this last provoking platitude we need 
not quarrel, but the main assertion must be 
challenged nevertheless. In the first place it is 
a fact that we do not feel the same repulsion at 
the representation of madness on the stage as 
we do at a similar case in real life, whereas with 
physical brutality the effect seems in drama to 
be almost magnified. Could we possibly feel 



44 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

more keenly the blow which Othello gives to 

Desdemona if the scene took place in our own 

family? It is at least doubtful. But if we 

think of the suffering of Lear, or of Ophelia, 

and suppose one-tenth of it inflicted on our 

dearest friend, the thought becomes perfectly 

unbearable. It is not that we do not enter into 

the spirit of "King Lear," but rather that the 

sufferings of the aged King, by reason of their 

very remoteness from human life, give us the 

actual " tragic feeling " which Shakespearean 

tragedy inevitably produces. 

Not only so, but the state of the madman, 

provided that apart from him the play contains 

the requisite tragic hero, is admirably calculated 

to contribute, through the emotions of pity and 

fear, to that KaOdpa-i^ which Aristotle considers 

to be the essence of tragedy. Tragic pity will 

most surely be excited at the misfortunes of 

" one who is undeserving," that is of 

"a man 
More sinn'd against than sinning." 

Hardly any disaster which may befall a human 
being can excite such tragic pity as the crowning 
disaster of insanity. Whatever a man's sins, we 
feel that the loss of reason more than atones for 
them all. If the greatest villain in drama should 
lose his reason, we should feel this ; when Lear, 
the rash, impetuous King of Britain, becomes 
insane, we cry out, forgetting for the time his 



LITEKARY PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 45 

tragic error, that his punishment is too great 

for him. When the brief scene is ended we 

consign him to the Great Silence, not with 

feelings of rebellion but with a sense of supreme 

calm : 

"He hates him 
That would upon the rack of this tough world 
Stretch him out longer." i 

So equally with tragic fear. This emotion, 
which is no vulgar sense of possible or impen- 
ding misfortune to ourselves, but an awed and 
sympathetic feeling for a character essentially 
of the nature of our own, is brought out to the 
full by means of the portrayal of madness. For 
what reduces men so quickly to the same level 
as the loss of reason by a fellow-man ? In real 
life our hearts are stirred by compassion, yet 
moved by inexpressible awe, as we see or hear 
of one whom we have known and whose senses 
have deserted him. Be he of high or low station, 
it matters nothing. Differences of rank are 
forgotten — and this is less often so with physical 
calamity. Loss of reason has effected the 
belated recognition of our common humanity. 
Carry this into the imaginative world of drama, 
and you have the emotion of tragic fear. 

The representation, then, of madness in 

tragedy would seem to be not only permissible, 

but of the greatest value to the drama when this 

madness is worked into the plot and becomes an 

1 •' King Lear," v., 3, 313. 



46 ELIZABETHAN DEAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

essential part of it. Often, however, and especially 
with the lesser lights of the Elizabethan stage, 
it held a place wholly subsidiary to the main 
theme of the tragedy. If tragic fear and tragic 
pity were to be evoked it would be by other 
means; madness was required for colouring 
effects, and to lend a peculiar atmosphere to 
the tragedy. It was sketched but lightly, fre- 
quently with little attempt at reality ; whether 
this arose from the dramatists' lack of ability, 
or from a desire to lessen the supposed pain, 
can only be a matter of conjecture. The intro- 
duction of madness, as a subsidiary element, 
into tragedy, appears to be justifiable only when 
it is regarded objectively with no relation to the 
pain caused to the sufferer. Let us illustrate. 
The Duchess of Malfi, previously to her death, 
is made to listen to the cries and to watch the 
antics of madmen. The intention of the author 
is evident. Whether we consider him to have 
been successful or not, we can hardly cavil at 
his device when we bear in mind the nature of 
the tragedy. But had a madman been intro- 
duced and presented as a new character with a 
definite interest of his own, either at this or at 
an earlier stage of the play, we should have 
rightly condemned the new feature as inartistic 
and revolting, for our centre of gravity, so to 
say, would at once have been shifted from the 
unfortunate lady to the unfortunate madman. 



LITERARY PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 47 

The conception of madness in tragedy is a 
powerful one and cannot be trifled with. 

There is another point of view from which 
the question must be considered before we pass 
from tragedy to comedy, — namely, that of the 
action. It is recognised that in tragedy properly 
so called the conflict must spring from the 
actions of the hero, and that the calamity which 
marks the tragedy must be unmistakeably 
dependent upon this generating action. Now 
the hero, to commit a tragic error, must 
obviously be responsible for his actions, — other- 
wise the tragedy will rest upon an irrational 
basis, which would be absurd. No abnormal 
mental state, then, such as would arise from 
drunkenness, hallucination, or insanity, can 
serve to generate the conflict. The most usual 
and natural position for the introduction of 
insanity will be either during a considerable 
part of the decline of the action from the crisis 
(as with Ophelia's madness in "Hamlet")* or 
immediately preceding the catastrophe (cf. the 
sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth), when it adds 
greatly to the force of the tragedy. The con- 
struction of " King Lear " is in this respect 
peculiar. Lear's madness, to the ordinary 
spectator, is first noticeable in the third act ;^ 

1 Taking the Play Scene (iii., 2.) as the crisis. 

2 Indeed many critics find incipient madness in Lear's 
conduct even earlier, i.e. from the very beginning of the 
play. This view I cannot hold ; Lear's actions in the early 



48 ELIZABETHAN DEAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

but, as Dr. Bradley points out, it is more satis- 
factory from the point of view of the construc- 
tion to consider, not Lear, but Goneril, Edmund 
and Regan, as the leading characters in the 
play.' 

What of madness in comedy? This, we 
confess, it is difficult, if not impossible, to 
justify. Feigned madness may, no doubt, have 
some place in a comedy, and such tricks as 
occur in ** Northward Ho ! " where the poet 
Bellamont narrowly escapes being immured in 
a madhouse, may, and certainly did appeal to 
a certain kind of audience. But the intro- 
duction of Bedlam into a romance such as 
" The Pilgrim," or a comedy of low life such 
as " The Changeling," merely for the sake of 
giving some cheap amusement to the ground- 
lings, reveals a mind which one would suppose 
to be untouched by the elements of human pity. 
It can only be understood in the light of the 
treatment accorded to the lunatic in real life. 
And our authors' sins do not end here. In more 
than one comedy in which the madman appears, 
little or no attempt is made to give even an 
approximate idea of what he might be expected 
to say or do. His presence is merely an excuse 



part of the play do not seem to me to be the result of any- 
thing but the childishness of old age. The King is quite 
responsible for his actions. If he were not, he would be the 
one exception to Shakespeare's practice in his tragedies. 
3 Sh. Trag., p. 53. 



LITEBARY PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 49 

for the coarsest of jokes and the vilest of songs, 
which, no doubt, lost nothing in the acting. 
The degradation of a theme which is properly 
tragic is unhappily only what may be expected 
from playwrights whose work graced the Post- 
Restoration stage. 

In tragi-comedy, it may be said, madness 
has a legitimate place, and we find the authors 
of " The Two Noble Kinsmen," among others, 
making full use of it. We shall best see, when 
we consider this play separately, how impossible 
it is to reconcile madness with the denouement 
of comedy. We may be able to put a hook into 
the nose of leviathan, but we can no more use 
the sufferings of mad folk and then bring them 
to a denouement, in a tragi-comedy worthy of 
the name, than we can supply a "happy ending" 
to " Hamlet " or " Lear." The heights of mania 
are very high, as the depths of idiocy are very 
low. The maniac, though cured of his disease, 
does not fit into comedy, any more than the 
imbecile, however well-born, can harmonise 
with tragedy. From one point of view at least, 
a great man is at his greatest when he is 
possessed by an uncontrollable passion. If the 
madman of a tragi-comedy is sufficiently great 
for tragedy, the play cannot be resolved into a 
comedy ; if he is not a possible tragic hero, his 
madness is not sufficiently imposing to raise the 
conflict to a crisis. We are on the horns of 



50 ELIZABETHAN DEAISIA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

a dilemma which may be avoided in practice 
by some dramatic genius, but which were 
certainly not avoided in Elizabethan drama 
by those authors who rushed in where others 
might fear to tread. 

2. We have now to enquire into the actual 
presentation of madness in our tragedy and 
comedy, and it must be confessed at once that 
the results will be somewhat disappointing. 
We have between twenty and thirty plays of 
which it may fairly be said that the conception 
of madness enters definitely into the plot, 
and of this number all, save four or five, are 
comedies. The tragedies may briefly be con- 
sidered first. 

In " King Lear," mad folk are given an 
exalted place. On the madness of the old 
King depends the whole play ; the scenes 
which are naturally the most striking become 
more terrible because of his ravings ; their effect 
is further enhanced by the feigned madness of 
Edgar and by the curious half-imbecility of the 
Fool. In "Hamlet" the hero's assumption of 
an " antic disposition " is inextricably inter- 
woven with the main plot, while Ophelia's 
loss of reason is largely responsible for the 
catastrophe. Nowhere else in Elizabethan 
Tragedy do we find so bold a use of the mad- 
man as here. Turn to " The Changeling " and 
Middleton's ideas of what can be done with 



LITERAKY PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 51 

him take shape. There is a comic underplot, 
alternating during the greater part of the play 
with a fine tragic theme, and only becoming 
connected with it towards the end — this under- 
plot embodies the grossest of all possible con- 
ceptions of madness. From a sublime passion, 
it becomes material for vulgar intrigue. Even 
where mad folk are seriously treated in these 
tragedies, they are not portrayed with the 
power of which the author is capable. Penthea, 
for example, in Ford's " Broken Heart," though 
not, as has been suggested, a mere reminiscence 
of Ophelia, is somewhat slightly and inade- 
quately drawn. And one would at least have 
expected Webster, with his penchant towards 
the carnival of horrors, to have produced some- 
thing better than the inane songs and dances 
which, with hardly the saving grace of being 
grotesque, disfigure the fourth act of the 
"Duchess of Malfi." The fact is that the 
common Elizabethan treatment of insanity 
was so far removed from the humane that 
the subject was regarded rather as one for 
mirth than for solemnity — for comedy and not 
for tragedy. 

Reconciling ourselves as best we can to this 
state of things, let us examine some repre- 
sentative comedies. There are, in the first 
place, those in which insanity plays quite a 
subsidiary part and is not in the least essential 



52 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

to the main plot. In " The Silent Woman," for 
example, the pretended madness of Morose is 
an occasion for much merriment, but it lasts 
only for part of a scene. In " Northward Ho ! ", 
Maybery, Greenshield and their friends lay a 
merry plot against Bellamont and contrive to 
secure his arrest as a madman, though here 
again, the jest is but a short one. Similarly, 
in "Twelfth Night," Malvolio is treated as if 
he were insane, much to the delight of Maria, 
Sir Toby, and the lesser folk; while in the 
" Comedy of Errors " many accusations of mad- 
ness are bandied to and fro, which more than 
once lead to violence. Sometimes the madness 
is only reported. In " Cymbeline," the Queen 
is said in the fourth act to be afflicted by 

" A fever with the absence of her son, 
A madness of which her life's in danger," 

and there is little doubt that her violent death, 

"most shameless-desperate," was due to some 

derangement of the reason. So, too, the Lady 

Constance dies "in a frenzy," and Brutus* 

Portia, it is reported, 

" feU distract 
And, her attendants absent, swallow'd fire." 
Such scenes as these last three, however, 
Shakespeare has, with his usual tact, kept 
off the stage, knowing that in the case of 
** Cymbeline " he would otherwise introduce 
too violent a nemesis into what was rapidly 
becoming the denouement of a romantic comedy. 



LITEKAEY PBESENTATION OF MADNESS 53 

Massinger, on the contrary, in " A New Way to 
Pay Old Debts," seems rather to welcome this 
nemesis, allowing his extortioner. Sir Giles 
Overreach, when outwitted in the fifth act, to 
go mad and to be taken off to Bedlam. It will 
be noticed that most of the examples just given 
(excluding those of " reported " insanity) have 
been mainly of pretended madness ; where 
bona-fide mad folk are introduced into comedy 
without affecting the construction of the play, 
this is usually for the sake of a vulgar realism 
or of comic effect falsely so-called. We have 
already seen enough of this and may pass on. 

In " Bartholomew Fair " we have a madman 
delineated with some care. Trouble-all, the 
lunatic in question, only makes his appearance 
in the fourth act, but from his entry to the 
close of the play he evokes, together with 
Quarlous, who masquerades in his clothes, a 
considerable share of attention. His place in 
the plot is an important one. Dame Purecraft, 
who is being wooed by that notorious Puritan, 
Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, and by a gentleman 
named Winwife, has had it foretold that she 
must marry a madman within seven days. She 
has been daily to Bedlam to enquire if any 
insane gentlemen are available, but it is only 
when she meets Trouble-all that she feels 
any inclination towards one. By a trick, how- 
ever, Quarlous, a ** gamester" and a friend of 



54 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

Winwife's, succeeds in duping and eventually- 
marrying the Dame, and although Trouble-all 
discovers the ruse, all ends happily. It will be 
seen, when a sketch of the madman is attempted 
on another page, how carefully the lunatic is 
portrayed. 

It is needless to examine all the comedies in 
which the madman is more intricately inter- 
woven with the plot than in "Bartholomew 
Fair," for the work is seldom done with any- 
appreciable dramatic skill, or with the least 
vestige of sympathy. The plot of "The Mad 
Lover," a play in Fletcher's worst style, will 
serve as a typical example. Madness here forms 
the basis and theme of the plot. Memnon, a 
valiant general somewhat advanced in years, 
albeit a blunt, uncourtly fellow, has returned 
from his victories to the Court of Paphos. He 
falls in love with Calis, the King's sister, who 
is herself in love with Memnon's brother, Foly- 
dore. The General proposes in truly singular 
fashion; his courtship begins and ends with 
three remarks : " I love thee, lady," " With all 
my heart I love thee," and finally, " Good lady, 
kiss me ! " Calis, supposing not unnaturally 
that he is mad, ignores him ; when she has left 
the room, the Mad Lover suddenly grows 
quarrelsome, talks wildly, and declares that his 
suit shall succeed. Calis, re-entering, is held up, 
and, growing fearful, tries to humour him, but 



LITEKARY PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 55 

he rushes from her presence with wild threats. 
In the next act, we find him contemplating 
death for the purpose of presenting his lady 
with his heart. This announcement of his pro- 
ject sends more than one of his friends to plead 
for him with the Princess. Meanwhile, Poly- 
dore, who has overheard his brother entreating 
the surgeon to cut out his heart and seen the 
surgeon beat a hasty retreat, concludes that the 
** cause is merely heat " and contrives a double 
expedient. For Memnon he dresses up another 
woman as the Princess, in the hope that he may 
be satisfied with her; at the same time, he 
reports to Calis that Memnon has carried out 
his threat and makes believe to present the 
General's heart in a cup together with some 
verses from her '* dead " lover. This makes her 
a little remorseful. But Memnon refuses to be 
deceived, and it is only when Polydore himself 
pretends to be dead that the Princess is induced 
to change her mind and marry Memnon. In- 
stantly the Mad Lover becomes sane, and all is 
well. 

Of the tragi-comedies into which this theme 
is introduced we may take two — " The Lover's 
Melancholy " and " Match Me in London " — as 
being representative. Each shows some im- 
provement on the " Mad Lover." The " Lover's 
Melancholy" is based, as the name partly implies, 
on the melancholy of Palador, Prince of Cyprus. 



66 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

whose love Eroclea has "disappeared," though 
in reality she is present in disguise during the 
whole play. The plot turns on the situation 
caused by the heroine's secret presence. Among 
the disasters occasioned by her "loss" is the 
madness of her father, Meleander ; his recovery, 
in the fifth act, is the best part of that act, the 
Prince having rediscovered his love long before 
(iv., 8.). Dr. Ward considers that the melancholy 
of Palador " recalls Hamlet." ^ The young Prince 
is certainly an interesting character, and the 
curtness of his exclamations and replies, together 
with the natural grace of his disposition, afford 
quite a noticeable contrast with the now co- 
herent, now raving old father. Both characters 
are intimately connected with the plot ; and 
both present traits, as will be seen, which are 
fully in harmony with their conditions. It only 
remains to wish that Ford had not been inspired 
by Burton, and that the zealous physician 
Corax had refrained from presenting the Prince 
with that "trifle" of his "own brain," to wit, 
the tedious and unnecessary " Masque of Melan- 
choly." 

It may at first appear a violent anti-climax 
to come to Dekker's "Match Me in London." 
Nevertheless the working into the plot of Tor- 
miella's feigned madness is quite in the true 
dramatic spirit, and one scene leaves us a little 

1 Eng. Dram. Lit. : Vol. ii., p. 297. 



LITERABY PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 57 

suspicious, as is so often the case with the plays 
of Shakespeare's contemporaries, of the influence 
of Ophelia. Tormiella is a young shopkeeper's 
wife whom the King tries to seduce ; he visits 
her in disguise and she is beguiled away, with 
the compliance of her father. The situation 
develops thus : Malevento, Tormiella's father, 
rushes on the stage, crying out that his daughter 
has lost her reason :* 

Mai, O royal Sir, my daughter Tormiella 

Has lost her use of reason and gone mad. 
King, When ! 

Mai. Not half an hour since. 
King. Mad now 1 now frantic ! 

When all my hopes are at the highest pitch 
To enjoy her beauties I talk no more ; thou liest. 

[Enter Gazetto, 
Gaz. May it please your Majesty-— 
King. Curses consume thee— oh — [Strikes him, 

Gaz. It is dispatch'd, the Queen is lost, never to be 

found. 
King. Wave upon wave, 

Hard-hearted Furies, when will you dig my 

grave? 
You do not hear him, thunder shakes Heaven 

first. 
Before dull earth can feel it: — 
My dear, dear'st Queen is dead. 

The King is distracted. " Without a woman," 
he says, he will himself " run mad at midnight." 
The physician is to use his " skill," but if that 
prove unavailing the King's resolve is taken 
nevertheless. 

1 " Match Me in London," Act v., Sc. 1. 



58 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

" I will marry 
The lunatic lady, she shall be my Queen, 
Proclaim her 80."i 

So saying, he leaves the room, and almost 
simultaneously Tormiella enters. She plays the 
madwoman for some time before the physician ; 
but, discovering at length that he is in reality 
an agent for her husband, she reveals her sanity 
to him, together with the reasons for her assump- 
tion of madness. The action hurries on from 
this point with increasing rapidity; and, after 
several plots have been thwarted, the dead come 
to life and sinners are converted, after the 
approved manner of romantic comedy. But 
enough has been said to shew how the somewhat 
vulgar plot is given a startling and unexpected 
turn, at a point where, to tell the truth, it is 
badly needed. The actual "mad scene" is 
extremely short, but it serves a true dramatic 
purpose and is far from being the worst thing 
in the play. We are a long way from the comic 
scenes of the "Changeling" and the "Honest 
Whore " of Dekker himself. 

In these few pages we have briefly considered 
the places occupied by mad folk in some of the 
most representative of our tragedies and come- 
dies. In many of them sublime passion is 
degraded for the most vulgar of purposes; in 
many more there is little attempt to realise the 

1 Ibid., v., 1. 



LITERARY PRESENTATION OF MADNESS 59 

nature of insanity — mere surface work, a "writing 
down " to the lowest type of contemporary play- 
goer. Such prostitution of art appears to us, in 
the light of Shakespeare's plays and of our own 
opinions, unworthy and hase. Yet it must not 
be forgotten that many of the "madhouse 
scenes" of our plays contain much genuine 
humour which from the point of view of the 
day was harmless and legitimate. And as we 
have already agreed to take up, as far as possible, 
the position of the author himself, we shall 
restrain our Puritanical or artistic indignation, 
and pass on to consider our mad folk themselves, 
as men and women rather than as puppets of a 
playwright, from the point of view not of con- 
struction but of character. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Mad Folk in Comedy and Teagedy— 
(i.) The Maniacs. 

"Whom if you'll see, you must be weaponless." 

(The Honest Whore.) 

In the division of our study upon which we 
have now entered, the various figures of mad- 
men will be considered under some five or six 
headings. We shall naturally exclude the mere 
crowds of madmen who enter the plays as lay 
figures rather than as personalities of the drama. 
The largest of the remaining classes will be 
dealt with first, namely, that which includes 
" maniacs," or "madmen" in the proper accepta- 
tion of the term. Next come the half-witted, 
who will not detain us long ; then the melan- 
choliacs, who appear so frequently that they 
demand a section to themselves; next those 
suffering from hallucinations and delusions, 
who have not perhaps crossed the border-line, or 
who exhibit abnormal symptoms which can 
hardly be included in the term insanity, though 
they are very near it. Lastly, there is a group 
of pretenders, — of whom Hamlet and Edgar are 
the chief, — members of which attract our atten- 
tion in several other plays. 



THE MANIACS 61 

Greene's Orlando, a rude and undeveloped 
character, whose frenzy is quite conventional, 
may be briefly mentioned by way of prelude. 
His ravings are composed mainly of scraps of 
classical lore: "Woods, trees, leaves; leaves, 
trees, woods, tria sequuntur tria ; ergo optimus 
vir non est optimus magistratus, a peny for a 
pote of beer and sixe pence for a peec of beife 7 
wounds! what am I the worse? O Minerva! 
salve ; good morrow ; how do you to-day ? Sweet 
goddesse, now I see thou lovest thy ulisses, 
lovely Minerva, tell thy ulisses, will Jove send 
Mercury to Calipso to lett me goe ? "^ It will be 
seen that Greene has no idea of making his 
madman anything more than a source of amuse- 
ment. His violence is noteworthy : more than 
once he " beats " those who listen to his ravings. 
Scraps of incident like the fight with Brandi- 
mant, King of the Isles, are highly significant ; 

Brandimant. "Frantic companion, lunatic and wood, 
Get thee hence, or else I vow by heaven, 
Thy madness shall not privilege thy 
life." 
lAlarum. They fight. Orlando kills Brandimant. 

The following dialogue, too, is delightfully 
naive : 

Enter Tom and Ralph. 

Ralph. O Tom, look where he is I Call him madman. 
Tom. Madman, Madman. 

Ralph. Madman, Madman. 
Orlando. What say'st thou, villain ? {^Beata him. 

1 From the Alleyn MS. 



62 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

It only remains to add that after being treated 
for his disease by Melissa, a witch — she sprinkles, 
among other things, many Latin verses over 
him — Orlando recovers his sanity, and cries : 

** Sirrah, how came I thus disguis'd, 
Like mad Orestes, quaintly thus attir'd?" 

A more serious study of insanity, in a work 
of that unbridled force which characterised the 
University Wits, is Kyd's portrayal of Hieronimo 
and Isabella/ 

Hieronimo, Marshal of Spain, whose son 
Horatio has been murdered by the King's 
nephew, Lorenzo, is stricken with insanity as 
a result of the shock ; his lunacy is intermittent 
(closely akin to the disease known as manic 
depressive insanity), but it is only right to add 
that this result is largely due to the addition of 
certain scenes to the play by another hand. 
Kyd represents Hieronimo as afflicted by a deep 
melancholy which is only a later phase of his 
grief and in no way prevents him from doing 
his ordinary duties ; the scenes in which his 
ravings are at their wildest are commonly 
attributed to Ben Jonson. It is therefore of 
little use attempting to trace any regular 
development of Hieronimo's madness; a short 
account of it will suffice. 

It breaks out, not when entering the arbour "in 
his shirt, etc.," he first discovers his murdered 
1 "Spanish Tragedy." 



THE MANIACS 63 

son, but after he has cut him down from the tree 
on which he has been hanged, and has lamented 
the murder with his wife. All his ravings, as 
we are told later in the play, are of Horatio. 

" His heart is quiet — like a desp'rate man, 
Grows lunatic and childish for his son. 
Sometimes, as he doth at his table sit, 
He speaks as if Horatio stood by him ; 
Then, starting in a rage, falls on the earth. 
Cries out ' Horatio, where is my Horatio ? ' 
So that with extreme grief and cutting sorrow 
There is not left in him one inch of man."i 

At the conclusion of the scene the distracted 
father is made to recite some Latin verses, 
usually attributed to Kyd himself. Hieronimo's 
** tragical speeches " do not again reveal a mind 
unhinged, until the eleventh scene of the third 
act, where the interpolator is once more busy. 
This, however, occurring as it does in Kyd's 
part of the play, where the Marshal is still 
sane, must not be mistaken for a sign of mad- 
ness. He utters the word "son." In his dis- 
ordered brain this starts a train of bewildered 
reasoning. "My son, and what's a son?" — he 
debates the question dispassionately until he 
once more remembers his loss. Then his grief 
breaks forth : he rants of Nemesis and Furies, 
murder and confusion, and even in Kyd's work 
we now see that " this man is passing lunatic." 
From this point onwards Hieronimo pursues 
his course of revenge with all the dogged 
1 " Spanish Tragedy," iii., 12a. 



64 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

cunning of real madness. His violence sur- 
prises the King, who is ignorant of its cause. 
He digs with his dagger; he would "rip the 
bowels of the earth." " Stand from about me," 
he cries to the courtiers, 

" I'll make a pickaxe of my poniard 
And here surrender up my marshalship ; 
For I'll go marshal up the fiends in hell, 
To be avenged on you all for this." i 

The next scene — an interpolation — is the 
weirdest and perhaps the most effective in the 
play. Tormented by delusions of spirits, yet 
hotly denying his madness even while raving 
on all kinds of topics, Hieronimo is confronted 
with a painter, Bazardo. Ever mindful of his 
cruel bereavement, he entreats Bazardo to paint 
a picture of him with his wife and son, to paint 
a murderer, " a youth run through and through," 
and — if he only could — " to paint a doleful cry." 
At the end of this scene Hieronimo is at his 
greatest, and, although in a more detailed study 
of the play the manner of his revenge and his 
death would find due place, we will be content 
to leave him here : 

"Make me curse," he cries, "make me rave, make me 

cry, make me mad, make me well again, make me 

curse hell, invocate heaven, and in the end leave me 

in a trance — and so forth. 
Painter. And is this the end ? 
Hieronimo. O no, there is no end : the end is death and 

madness ! As I am never better than when I am 

1 " Spanish Tragedy," iii., 12. 



THE MANIACS 65 

mad ; then, methinks, I am a brave fellow ; then I 

do wonders ; but reason abuseth me, and there's 

the torment, there's the hell. At the last, sir, bring 

me to one of the murderers ; were he as strong aa 

Hector, thus would I tear and drag him up and 

down."i 

Hieronimo's wife, Isabella, who is similarly 

afflicted by Horatio's murder, though she plays 

a much smaller part in the play, first "runs 

lunatic " in a short scene with her maid. Here 

her talk is mere nonsense : 

" Why did I not give you gowns and goodly things, 
Bought you a whistle and a whipstalk too, 
To be revenged on their villanies ? " 2 

She seems sane enough, however, in the 
" Painte Scene," and only appears once again,* 
when she cuts down the accursed arbour and, 
after a long soliloquy, stabs herself. 

The comparatively rough sketches of Greene 
and Kyd — the first, in order of time, of those under 
consideration — have been introduced thus early 
into this chapter for the sake of contrast with 
the figures that follow.* Kyd, in " The Spanish 
Tragedy," almost certainly inspired ** Titus 
Andronicus," and we may be fairly sure of his 
influence on "Hamlet." Now that we have 

1 Ibid., iii., 12a. 2 Ibid., iii., 8. 3 Ibid., iv., 2. 
4 Other examples of conventional madness abound. See 
page 151, Note 1. (Ann Katclifif, in "The Witch of Edmon- 
ton.") Peele, in the " Old Wives* Tale," presents us with a 
character, Venelia, sent mad by a sorcerer, Sacrapant : 

She ** runs madding, all enraged, about the woods 
All by his cursed and enchanting spells." 
But, apart from this, she does nothing ! 



66 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAT) FOLK 

examined the work of the instructor, let us turn 
to Shakespeare's maniacs and see how the pupil 
has bettered the instruction. 

The most powerful character among the 
maniacs, by far the grandest figure in our 
drama of insanity, if not indeed in the whole 
of English drama, is King Lear. " Grandly 
passive " — the description is Professor Dowden's 
— "played upon by all the manifold forces of 
nature and society," he " passes away from our 
sight, not in any mood of resignation or faith 
or illuminated peace, but in a piteous agony of 
yearning for that love which he had found only 
to lose for ever."* This alone would make him 
a noteworthy figure, but he has far greater 
claims on our admiration and wonder. He is as 
lovable, even in his greatest weakness, as the 
most affectionate of all Shakespeare's characters, 
yet more terrible than his darkest villains. He 
takes hold at once of our sympathy, our pity 
and our imagination, and the tragic feelings 
evoked by the drama conflict in us with the 
more human emotions roused by his own 
essential humanity. 

At the beginning of the play he is often said 
to be already insane, especially by those medical 
writers who are somewhat inclined to pervert 
Shakespeare in order to read in him their own 
opinions. ** The general belief is that the 
1 " Shakespeare, His Mind and Art," p. 272. 



THE MANIACS 67 

insanity of Lear originated solely from the ill- 
treatment of his daughters, while in truth he 
was insane before that, from the beginning of 
the play, when he gave his kingdom away." 
Thus Dr. Brigham, in the "American Journal 
of Insanity," and thus more than one of his 
kind. But if what they assert be true, and Lear 
is really mad in the first scene of the play, then 
'* King Lear " is not, in the Shakespearean 
sense, a tragedy at all. Lear is not mad, 
however, at this point, as an examination of 
the scene will shew. His apparently arbitrary 
division of the kingdom has really been planned 
before the opening of the play; the protestations 
of love on the part of his daughters are only 
planned as an impressive setting for the 
bestowal of the richest portion upon his best- 
loved child. Nor was it the King's original 
intention to live with each of his daughters in 
turn : " I loved her most," he says of Cordelia, 
"and thought to set my rest on her kind 
nursery."^ His powers are indeed failing; his 
childishness, his vanity, his wayward temper 
have more sway over him than of old; but at 
the very worst his state is but one of incipient 
senile decay. His daughters themselves recog- 
nise this. " 'Tis the infirmity of his age," says 
Regan to Goneril, " such unconstant starts are 
we like to have from him as this of Kent's 

1 "King Lear," i., 1, 125-6. 



68 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

banishment," and Goneril adds that they must 
"look ... to receive, not alone the imper- 
fections of long-ingraffed condition, but there- 
withal the unruly waywardness that infirm and 
choleric years bring with them."^ Here, then, 
he stands, impatient and passionate, " a very 
foolish, fond old man," but sane in every sense 
of the word. Only a physician could detect in 
his " unconstant starts " a predisposition to 
insanity, with which, since it is not part of 
the play, we need not concern ourselves. 

When the King next appears, his passion 
is for a time calmed, and his state, apart 
from the short scene with Oswald (i., 4, 84, 
etc.), one of tolerant indulgence. The caustic 
comments of the fool he listens to and en- 
courages ; it is only when Goneril appears 
that his tone changes to one of ill-concealed 
irritation. " How now, daughter ! what makes 
that frontlet on? Methinks you are too much 
of late i' the frown."'' He pierces the thin 
disguise of urbanity which cloaks her speeches, 
and attacks with all the fierceness he can 
summon the ingratitude which it conceals. 
It is by no chance that he strikes his head as he 

exclaims : 

**0 Lear, Lear, Lear. 
Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, 
And thy dear judgment out." 3 

1 •' King Lear," 1., 1, 296, etc. 2 Ibid., i., 4, 207-8. 

3 Ibid., i., 4, 292-4. : 



THE MANIACS 69 

He invokes the most terrible of curses on his 
ungrateful daughter. His words are here and 
there broken, but their sense is only too clear. 
Hot tears escape him in spite of himself; his 
manhood he feels to be shaken, and when alone 
with his Fool and the faithful Kent (now dis- 
guised as " Caius " the servant), he feels that 
passion and shock have done their worst. Even 
as he listens to the jests of the Fool, he knows 
that the curse is coming upon him. The " self- 
consciousness of gathering madness" breaks 
through all restraint : 

"O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! 
Keep me in temper, I would not be mad"i 

From this time onward his self-control grows 

less and less; try as he will, he is unable to 

restrain his passion : 

" O how this mother swells up toward my heart I 
Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow, 
Thy element's below! "2 

But the passionate nature is reasserting 
itself and will not be kept down. Sarcasm, 
tenderness, and anger alternate in his speeches ; 
he responds to the least sign of love, but any- 
thing less draws from him the bitterest 
reproaches. He prays for patience and for the 
judgment of Heaven to be manifested in his 
favour. Now he begins to approach incoherence, 
and the abruptness which marks the matter as 

1 *• King Lear," i., 5, 50-1. 2 Ibid., ii., 4, 56-8. 



70 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

well as the manner of his speech shews only 

too plainly the affection of his mind. His 

state of mind is truly described as one of 

"high rage." 

" No, I'll not weep ; 
I have full cause of weeping ; but this heart 
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, 
Or e'er I'll weep.— O fool, I shall go niad."i 

It is from this point, though the physicians, 
with Dr Bucknill at their head, deny it, that we 
can actually assert that Lear is insane. Hitherto 
there have been signs that his madness was 
imminent, but it is the scene on the Heath 
which is "par excellence," the scene of Lear's 
madness. It is true that, as Dr. Bucknill says, 
he has " threatened, cursed, wept, knelt, beaten 
others, beaten his own head." ^ But " the addition 
of a physical cause " marks the crisis of what 
Shakespeare certainly means to be understood 
as insanity in the sense which that term 
commonly bears. From this time predominates 
that symptom which is so widespread in cases 
of insanity — the domination of an idee fixe. 
After Lear has announced "My wits begin to 
turn"^ (a statement of itself not without signi- 
ficance), Edgar enters, disguised as Tom o' 
Bedlam. Lear mistakes him; the idea domi- 
nant in his mind comes to the surface : " Didst 

1 " King Lear," ii., 4, 285-9. 

2 " The Mad Folk of Shakespeare," p. 194. 

3 " King Lear," iii., 2, 67. 



THE MANIACS 71 

thou give all to thy daughters ? And art thou 
come to this?"* 

However, the ravings of the King by no means 
continue incessantly from this point. Indeed, 
in the presence of Edgar he becomes compara- 
tively tranquil, and henceforward periods of 
storm and calm follow in quick succession. His 
speeches still contain much reason, and they 
have lost little of their wonderful force. Edgar, 
appearing unclothed, is to Lear an enviable 
object— "the thing itself." Hence, through 
another semi-delusion, he becomes a "learned 
Theban," a "philosopher."^ This delusion con- 
tinually recurs, and is developed with much 
force and even eloquence, but with less poetry. 

In the scene where Lear arraigns a pair of 
joint-stools as his supposed daughters,^ we can 
trace all the wanderings of the deluded mind. 
In their "warp'd looks," the King can read 
"what store (their) heart is made on." He 
resolves to have them tried for their cruelty. 
Some people are standing about him. One 
(Edgar) is taken for a "robed man of justice." 
Another (the Fool) is " his yokefellow of equity." 
Kent is " o' the commission," and must take his 
place beside them. Goneril is arraigned first, 
and Lear takes his oath that " she kicked the 
poor King, her father." The j oint-stool naturally 

1 " King Lear," iii., 4, 49-50, 2 Ibid., iii., 4 passim. 
3 Ibid., iii., 6. 



72 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

makes no reply ; her guilt is thereby confirmed. 
** She cannot deny it." The other sister is then 
brought forward. But even as the self-consti- 
tuted witness is about to give evidence, the 
image vanishes from his mind; the delusion 
changes ; the criminal has escaped : 

"Arms, arms, sword, fire I Corruption in the place! 
False justicer, why hast thou let her 'scape?" 

Now Edgar is again the object of a delusion ; he 
is one of those scanty hundred followers : " You, 
sir, I entertain for one of my hundred ; only I 
do not like the fashion of your garments." It is 
all so true, and at the same time so pathetic! 
Edgar feels that he can hardly sustain his dis- 
guise. 

"My tears," he says, "begin to take his part so much, 
They mar my counterfeiting." 

A long interval (according to Daniel, four 
dramatic days) has passed before Lear again 
appears.* He is "fantastically dressed with 
wild flowers " and is at first ignorant of Edgar's 
presence. Now he is wild, full of delusions, and 
certain of nothing. His mind first runs upon 
soldiers and war : " There's your press-money. 
That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper."'* 
Now he recalls a scene with Goneril, now the 
terrors of the storm on the heath, now some 
memory of his former greatness. " Is't not 

1 " King Lear," iv., 6, 81, etc. 2 1. 85. 



THE MANIACS 73 

the King ? " asks Gloster, and the reply of Lear 

rings true : 

**Ay, every inch a king. 
When I do stare, see how the subject quakes."! 

" Matter and impertineney," to quote the words 
of Edgar, mingle in his speech. He seems no 
longer to suspect the nature of his disease. He 
only knows that he needs surgeons ; " I am cut 
to the brains ! " Mr. Cowden Clarke aptly draws 
the reader's attention to this phrase, — expressive 
of what acute physical and mental suffering ! — 
together with such phrases as " I am not ague- 
proof " and " Pull off my boots, harder, harder." 
It is in this scene, perhaps, more even than 
in the Storm Scene of the third act, that we 
feel the acutest distress at the King's sad 
condition. 

We are relieved at length. When next we 
meet King Lear,^ it is at Cordelia's tent in the 
camp. Gentle hands are ministering to him; 
loving faces are near to welcome him, when he 
shall awaken from the sleep which it is hoped 
will be his cure. He awakens to the sound of 
"soft music," growing gradually louder — how 
different from the " chimes of Bedlam " ! — and 
when Cordelia speaks to him, he believes her to 
be a spirit from Heaven. Then at last he wakes 
— still infirm of mind, but faintly conscious of 
infirmity, not frantic with physical and mental 
1 U. 109-10. 2 " King Lear," iv., 7. 



74 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS IMLAD FOLK 

pain. Everything in this scene is touched 
with the most delicate pathos; Lear's wistful 
plea: 

" Do not laugh at me, 
For, as I am a man, I think this lady, 
To be my child Cordelia." i 

Cordelia's heart-felt reply : 

"And so I am, I am." 2 

Kent's loyal assertion that his master is in his 

*• own kingdom," and the old father's final 

"Pray you now, forget and forgive," 3 

as if he were hardly convinced even yet that 

Cordelia's end was not revenge. 

With such tender care as might now have 

been his lot, the old King would surely have 

recovered something like his former state of 

mind. But this is not to be, and our dramatic 

selves at least will not wish that it should be so. 

When Lear enters, with Cordelia dead in his 

arms and the rest following behind, we feel 

perhaps as nowhere else his tragic greatness. 

One wrathful speech, one tender reminiscence, 

and another of the fiercest : 

"Her voice was ever soft. 
Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman, 
I kill'd the slave that was a-hanging thee."* 

A few questions and replies, and the catastrophe 
is upon us. Exquisite sympathy creates exqui- 
site pathos: 

1 "King Lear," iv., 7, 68-9. 2 l. 70. 3 1.84. 4 ibid., v., 3., 272-4. 



THE MANIACS 75 

" And my poor fool is hang'd I No, no, no life ! 
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, 
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, 
Never, never, never, never, never! — 
Pray you, undo this button ; thank you, sir, — 
Do you see this? Look on her— look— her lips- 
Look there, look there ! " i 

Lear is dead; he has rejoined his belovM 
daughter ; he has been " dismissed with calm 
of mind, all passion spent." What greater con- 
summation could we desire ? 

There is little need to insist upon the grandeur 
and pathos of Lear, and, happily, with our next 
subject of study, the need is equally small. Yet 
Shakespeare's presentation of Ophelia is utterly 
different from his presentation of Lear. The 
madness of Lear we are able to trace from its 
first symptoms; we follow it through all its 
involutions and are present at its partial cure. 
Ophelia we see but once after she " becomes dis- 
tract." A brief word of introduction, and she 
appears ; a few broken words and snatches of 
song and she has left us. A brief re-entry and 
she has passed us again, and all is over — all save 
the report of her death. Lear is an old man, 
predisposed to insanity by a passionate temper 
and a mind weakened by old age. Ophelia is a 
young girl, a "Rose of May," whose loss of 
reason excites in us not so much terror as sheer 
pity. With Lear the crisis is brought on by 
thwartings of the will, followed by the severest 

1 " King Lear," v., 3, 305, etc. 



76 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

physical exposure and shock. With Ophelia the 
cause is mental shock following the deepest of 
sorrows. Lear dies half-sane ; Ophelia is never 
restored to her right mind, — her death is not 
shewn to us like that of Lear. There is a reason 
for these differences. Ophelia is no tragic per- 
sonage and our sympathies are not to remain 
for long with her misery. She must disappear, 
lest she should destroy all our interest in the 
main plot. And thus we must not expect to 
find the depth in her character which we find in 
the character of Lear. 

Before her affliction wins for her our 
sympathy, Ophelia stands in our estimation far 
below Shakespeare's other heroines. Perhaps it 
would not be too much to say that at times, like 
Isabella in " Measure for Measure," she is actually 
repellent, and for exactly the opposite reason. 
She is passive and reserved, gentle to the point 
of weakness, a tool in the hand of any man who 
could gain her confidence. This is the reason 
for her mind giving way. Throughout her life, 
she has leaned for support, not on her own 
strength, but upon the strength of her father 
and her brother. Her father is murdered, her 
lover distracted, her brother far away — and 
Ophelia herself is unable to stand alone. 

We may have blamed her for a too ready 
acquiescence in her father's prying schemes and 
despised her for throwing over her lover, but 



THE MANIACS 77 

whatever her sins, they are more than atoned 
for by the treatment to which she has to submit 
at the hands of Hamlet himself ; and when, in 
addition to this, her father is killed and she 
loses her reason, we feel that these calamities 
have been wholly undeserved. Thus, when a 
Gentleman of the Court prepares the Queen for 
her sad entry, our sympathy is entirely won : 

'* She speaks much of her father ; says she hears 
There's tricks i' the world, and hems and beats her heart; 
Spurns enviously at straws ; speaks things in doubt, 
That carry but half sense." i 

She is led in, crooning to herself, chattering 
incoherently of her sorrows, confusing them in 
her mind and mingling them together in her 
speech. Her songs have been censured for their 
alleged grossness. Small wonder if they should 
contain reminiscences of her lover's foul talk, 
yet for the most part these ditties are mere 
expressions of piercing sorrow at his supposed 
untimely madness. First she is clearly recalling 
the scenes where he has disdained her. 

"How should I your true love know 
From another one ? " 2 

But as the Queen demands the meaning of the 
song, its theme changes : 

" He is dead and gone, lady, 
He is dead and gone ; 
At his head a grass-green turf. 
At his heels a stone." 3 

*• Hamlet," iv., 5, 4, etc. 2 Ibid., iv. 5, 23, etc. 3 U. 29-32. 



78 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

And then, as the King comes in, she confuses 
the two calamities, and sings, as though her 
lover and not her father were dead : 

** White his shroud as the mountain- snow . . 
Larded with sweet flowers ; 
Which bewept to the grave did go, 
With true-love showers." i 

The King's voice seems here to divert the broken 
current of her thoughts and she wanders again. 
Then, returning to the tragic theme with the 
most piteous of cries: "We must be patient; 
but I cannot choose but weep, to think they 
should lay him i' the cold ground,"^ she goes 
out. 

Before long Laertes returns, furious with 
rage at his father's violent end and eager to be 
revenged " most throughly " on his enemies. 
He has not heard of his sister's affliction and is 
dumbfounded, as at this moment she returns. 
Then he realises what has taken place and all 
his anger melts into a terrible grief : 

"O heat, dry up my brains I tears seven times salt 
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye . . . 
O heavens! is't possible a young maid's wits 
Should be as mortal as an old man's life?" 3 

Her pitiful condition soon reinforces his deter- 
mination to be revenged : ** This nothing's 
more than matter," ^ he exclaims, and the 
spectator re-echoes the cry as he gazes on the 
enraged brother and the afflicted girl whose 

1 *♦ Hamlet," iv., 5, 35, etc. ^ U. 68-70. 

3 Ibid., iv., 5, 155, etc. * 1. 173. 



THE MANIACS 79 

sorrows have been more than she can bear. In 
her madness there is not a jot of the maniacal 
frenzy which is the great characteristic of Lear. 
Her nature was ever too gentle : 

** Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, 
She turns to favour and to prettiness." i 

Though of a wholly different nature from 
the insanity of Lear, Shakespeare's delineation 
of Ophelia's madness is in its way quite as 
masterly. We see nothing of it in its earlier 
stages — indeed it would seem to have been of 
sudden birth and to have developed quickly. 
In her ravings there is none of that force and 
pregnancy which marks the invective of Lear ; 
two fixed ideas dominate her mind and con- 
stantly recur to it; apart from these she is 
totally incoherent. We are told, by those who 
know, that her insanity takes the form of 
erotomania, " the fine name for that form of 
insanity in which the sentiment of love is 
prominent ; " ^ we should suppose, indeed, from 
what she says, that her father's death is its 
chief cause, as the King and Queen naturally 
think also ; but this can hardly be assumed, for 
we cannot say how far she confuses the two 
causes of her affliction. 

The Queen's account of the death of Ophelia 
is in keeping both with the tone of the "mad 
scene" and with the nature of Ophelia's malady. 

1 11. 188-9. 

2 Ferriar, quoted by Dr. Bucknill, p. 155 (op. cit.) 



80 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

Exquisitely pathetic, it tells how the distraught 
girl, obeying a common instinct of the insane 
for floral decoration (an instinct which we also 
find in "King Lear") clambered with "fantastic 
garlands," on to a willow which overhung a 
stream. Mad folk are notoriously regardless 
of danger, and Ophelia's rashness led to a 
premature grave: 

"An envious sliver broke; 
When down her weedy trophies and herself 
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, 
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up; 
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, 
As one incapable of her own distress, 
Or like a creature native and indued 
Unto that element : but long it could not be 
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, 
PuU'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay 
To muddy death." i 
It will be seen that Shakespeare's Ophelia, 
though not in the technical sense a tragic 
character, is essentially a character of tragedy, 
for it would be only in the gravest and most 
pathetic of tragi-comedies that scenes so 
magnificently portrayed as those of Ophelia's 
madness and the report of her death could be 
allowed to appear. And in no case could we 
witness with equanimity her restoration to 
complete sanity. The character was apparently 
a popular one on the Elizabethan stage and in 
more than one contemporary play there are 
resemblances to it which are so marked as to 
1 "Hamlet," iv., 7, 167, etc. 



THE MANIACS 81 

make a conjecture of mere coincidence im- 
possible. We are now to consider a personage 
similarly conceived, but treated with none of 
the "high seriousness" of Ophelia and in 
altogether a lighter vein — and introduced into 
a comedy. This character (that of the * Gaoler's 
Daughter' in *The Two Noble Kinsmen/ 
probably the work of Shakespeare and Fletcher) 
is certainly one of the imitations of Ophelia. It 
is with equal certainty the work of Fletcher — 
indeed, the present writer is only prepared to 
admit Shakespeare's hand at all in two or three 
scenes, and these are entirely concerned with 
the main plot, whereas the story of the Gaoler's 
Daughter is a side issue, and she never appears 
on the stage at the same time as the Two Noble 
Kinsmen themselves. The nature of Fletcher's 
imitation — we might almost say his caricature 
— of Ophelia will best be seen from a brief 
account of the various scenes in which the 
Gaoler's Daughter appears. 

The main plot embodies the well-known 
story of Palamon and Arcite and their love 
for the fair Emilia. It will be remembered that 
in Chaucer's version of the story it was "by 
helping of a freend" that Palamon escaped from 
prison; in our play the friend is none other 
than the daughter of the gaoler. She is 
prompted to do this service by a hopeless and 
entirely unrequited love for the unfortunate 



82 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

prisoner, which helps to drive her to distraction. 
The exact nature of her malady is somewhat 
doubtful, and the author is not concerned to 
make it clear. One suspects that he was none 
too clear on the subject himself. The Doctor, 
who, unlike Shakespeare's physicians, is a 
rather incompetent fellow with a very com- 
petent tongue, says that her disease is "not 
an engraffed madness, but a most thick and 
profound melancholy."* Various other refer- 
ences, however, suggest mania rather than 
melancholy, and as the girl is an obvious imita- 
tion of Ophelia, she may best be considered here. 
The whole story of the development of her 
madness is told in those portions of the play 
which form the underplot, and, in its first 
stages, it is told with considerable skill. A 
** Wooer " is asking the Gaoler for his daughter's 
hand, and during the conversation the daughter 
herself comes in and the talk runs on the noble 
prisoners.^ The daughter is full of their praises. 
" By my troth, I think fame but stammers 'em ; 
they stand a grise above the reach of report.'* 
"The prison itself is proud of 'em; and they 
have all the world in their chamber." Then 
the two prisoners appear " above " and the 
girl at once shews the nature of her interest — 
much as Portia, in " The Merchant of Venice " is 
made to display her preference for Bassanio : 
1 " Two Noble Kinsmen," iv., 3. 2 Ibid., ii., 1. 



THE MANIACS 83 

Gaoler : "Look yonder they are ! that's Arcite looks out." 
Daughter: "No, sir, no; that's Palamon ; Arcite is the 

lower of the twain ; you may perceive a 

part of him." 

The love which one has probably suspected 
here is openly revealed in the fourth scene 
of the second act, which consists solely of a 
soliloquy by the Gaoler's Daughter. The course 
of her love is made plain to us : first she admired 
him; finally, pity having sprung from admiration 
and helpless love from pity, she 

" Extremely lov'd him, infinitely lov'd him." 
Her love has been fed by the plaintive songs 
he sings and impassioned by his kindness, his 
courtesy and a chance caress. On the next 
occasion* we see her more sympathetically yet 
— her love has achieved something, Palamon is 
free, and before long his deliverer is to meet him 
with food. But though she wanders by night 
through the forest, she is unable to find him. 
For two days nothing has passed her lips save 
a little water, she has not slept, and her whole 
being is alive with terror at the " strange howls " 
which seem to tell of her hero's untimely fate. 
" Dissolve my life ! " she cries, with the dire 
foreboding of the incipient lunatic, 

" Let not my sense unsettle, 

Lest I should drown, or stab, or hang myself . . . 
So, which way now? 

The best way is the next way to a grave : 

Each errant step beside is torment." 

1 Ibid., iii., 2. 



84 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

For a moment she disappears, only to re-enter* 

in a state bordering on frenzy. Dawn has 

broken, and her search has been unsuccessful : 

" Palamon I 
Alas no! he's in heaven— where am I now? 
Tender's the sea, and there's a ship ; how't tumbles ! 
And there's a rock lies watching under water ; 
Now, now, it beats upon it ; now, now, now. 
There's a leak sprung, a sound one; how they cry! 
Spoom her before the wind, you'll lose all else; 
Up with a course or two, and back about, boys; 
Good night, good night ; ye're gone. I'm very hungry : 
Would I could find a fine frog 1 he would tell me 
News from all parts o' the world; then would I make 
A careck of a cockle-shell, and sail 
By east and north-east to the King of Pygmies, 
For he tells fortunes rarely." 

She leaves us again, breaking into the first 
of her mad songs: 

"For I'll cut my green coat a foot above my knee; 
Hey nonny, nonny, nonny." 

Up to this point the character of the Gaoler's 
Daughter is not unworthy of Shakespeare, but 
Fletcher could not keep at so high a level for 
long. More than any of his contemporaries he 
creates mad folk for the purpose of embellish- 
ing his comedies ; in this play, having developed 
a situation with many fine capabilities, he 
proceeds to rush in and spoil his own work 
in the worst possible way. The luckless girl 
is introduced into a rustic scene'' and made 
to sing for the delectation of some peasants, 
to exchange coarse banter with them, and 

1 Ibid., iii., 4. 2 Ibid., lii., 5. 



THE MANIACS 85 

even to join in their morris. From this time 
forward the underplot is hopelessly degraded, 
both by its being drawn out to an absurd 
length and by its ending in the coarsest of 
scenes which leads to what we are asked to 
believe is the girl's complete restoration to 
sanity. 

The Wooer first acquaints the Gaoler with 
his sweetheart's complaint/ We learn that 
it has been preceded by the natural irritation 
which is common in such cases, and that she 
has answered her father's questions : 

" So chUdishly, 
So sillily, as if she were a fool, 
An innocent." 

Since we have last seen her, her senses have 
quite gone. She constantly repeats phrases 
which tell of her trouble — " Palamon is gone," 
" Palamon, fair Palamon," and the like. She 
even plagiarises Desdemona, and sings nothing 
but "Willow, willow, willow." She has been 
playing and garlanding herself with flowers ; 
now she weeps, now smiles, now sings ; reck- 
less of danger, she sits by a lake, and attempts 
to drown herself at the Wooer's approach. She 
appears at length'* and carries on the same 
kind of conversation, fancifully constructing 
long trains of imagination from the smallest 
incidents. While ever and anon the theme of 

1 Ibid., iv., 1. 2 Ibid., iv., 1, 104, etc. 



86 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

Palamon recurs : he is still in love with her — 
**a fine young gentleman," and he "lies long- 
ing " for her in the wood. 

This her father reports to the Doctor : " She 
is continually in a harmless distemper, sleeps 
little; altogether without appetite, save often 
drinking; dreaming of another world and abetter; 
and what broken piece of matter so e'er she's 
about the name Palamon lards it."* The Doctor 
is out of his depth. He understands little of 
the mind diseased, holding the popular notion 
that it is "more at some time of the moon 
than at other some," and confessing that he 
"cannot minister" to her "perturbed mind." 
The remedy which he proposes is of the crudest. 
The Wooer is to dress as if he were Palamon, 
satisfy all the girl's desires, and wait for her 
to return to her right mind. Both Wooer and 
Gaoler protest against the extreme application 
of this "cure," but the Doctor is so insistent 
that they give in, and when in the last scene 
Palamon enquires after the girl who procured 
his escape and who, he has heard, has been 
ill, he is told that she is 

"well restor'd 
And to be married shortly." 2 

It is unnecessary to dwell on the cure, for long 
before this stage the story has lost all semblance 
of probability. 

1 Ibid., iv., 3. 2 Ibid., v., 2. 



THE MANIACS 87 

The inferiority of the Gaoler's Daughter to 
Ophelia is as patent as that of the false to the 
true Florimel of Spenser's "Faerie Queene." A 
little more skill on the part of the author and a 
great deal more restraint would, no doubt, have 
effected an enormous improvement, hut it is 
unlikely that Fletcher could ever have made us 
take the same interest in the Gaoler's Daughter 
as we take in Ophelia. She is quite unneces- 
sary to the plot, and would require far greater 
depth of characterisation before she could appeal 
with any force to our sympathies. Had this 
been done, the taint of the comic and the coarse- 
ness removed, the ravings lessened and the 
execrable character of the Doctor changed, we 
might have had another Ophelia and not an 
exaggerated and debased imitation. 

Whatever the nature of the madness of our 
last subject, the affliction of Penthea, in Ford's 
" Broken Heart " is certainly acute melancholia. 
She is dealt with here for the sake of contrast 
with the two preceding characters. " The Broken 
Heart," as far as its "mad-scenes" are concerned, 
has certainly more in common with " Hamlet " 
than with " The Two Noble Kinsmen." It is a 
tragedy of more than usual gloom, and the 
scenes in question are marked by a subdued 
restraint quite absent from the "Two Noble 
Kinsmen." Penthea talks much more coherently 
than either Ophelia or her ape; and though there 



88 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

is a distinct want in her speeches of that colour 
which so marks the other two plays, she is much 
nearer Ophelia in spirit and essentials than the 
girl for whom Ophelia actually stood as a model. 

The story, so far as it concerns Penthea, is 
this: She is in love with Orgilus, son of a 
counsellor to the King of Laconia, but has been 
compelled to marry Bassanes, a jealous noble- 
man whom she detests. Her brother Ithocles' 
love for the King's daughter, Calantha, becomes 
known to Penthea, who, in spite of her brother's 
cruelty to her, tries to bring about their union ; 
when she is dead, however, her lover stabs 
Ithocles and the Princess dies of a broken heart. 
Penthea's situation, when in the second act she 
has an interview with Orgilus, is this : she is 
contracted to Bassanes, and though she loathes 
him and will have no more to do with him than 
she can help she will not consent to break the 
bond of marriage. Her loss of reason, which 
terminates in her death in the fourth act, is one 
of the main factors of the series of events which 
leads up to the impressive final situation. 

The scenes which portray the melancholy 
and distraction of Penthea are much superior to 
the others in which she appears, by reason of 
the irresistible sympathy which they inspire. 
We are not greatly enamoured of the unhappy 
girl in the first scenes ; her character is some- 
what slightly drawn, and, as one commentator 



THE MANIACS 89 

puts it, there is " a trace of selfishness in her 
sorrow, which operates against the sympathy 
excited by her sufierings."* This is dispelled in 
that touching scene (iii., 6), where Penthea 
pleads with Calantha on behalf of her brother. 
Her plaintive farewell to life, in the same scene, 
is not less touching : 

" Glories 
Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams 
And shadows soon decaying; on the stage 
Of my mortality my youth hath acted 
Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length 
By varied pleasures sweetened in the mixture, 
But tragical in issue . . . 

. . . You may see 
How weary I am of a lingering life, 
Who count the best a misery." 

When she next enters " with her hair loose " 
(iv., 2), Bassanes and Orgilus are engaged in a 
violent quarrel. She is followed by Ithocles 
heart-broken like Shakespeare's Laertes, begging 
her to look up and speak to him : 

*' Your Ithocles, your brother, 
Speaks t' ye; why do you weep? Dear, turn not from 
me." 

The sight moves all to pity or remorse, save only 

Orgilus, whose bitter sarcasm, when rebuked by 

Ithocles, turns to a dreadful thirst for revenge. 

But the afflicted girl recks nothing of this. Loss 

of sleep and a voluntary fast have combined 

with her heavy sorrows to produce the inevitable 

1 Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit., ii., 300. The original criticism, 
as Dr. Ward points out, is GifEord's. Cf. the latter's edition 
of Ford, vol. i., p. 337. 



90 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

result; her depression has deprived her of her 

reason and she is sinking into her grave : 

"There's not a hair 
Sticks on my head, but, like a leaden plummet, 
It sinks me to my grave : I must creep thither ; 
The journey is not long." 

" Her fancies guide her tongue," but the burden 

of her talk is the subject of marriage, child 

bearing, infidelity, and true love. Her resolve 

to die by starvation is certainly the project of a 

disordered brain, though Mr. Saintsbury treats 

it as if it were not, and censures the character 

as unnatural!* Assuming that 

*' There is no peace left for a ravished wife 
Widowed by lawful marriage," 

she declares that her blood shall 

" be henceforth never heightened 
With taste of sustenance," 

and falls fainting into her attendant's arms. 

The subsequent account of her death^ is the 

more pathetic by reason of its brevity : 

Philema. "She called for music, 

And begged some gentle voice to tune a farewell 
To life and griefs; Christalla touched the lute; 
I wept the funeral song. 

Christalla. Which scarce was ended 

But her last breath sealed up these hollow sounds, 
' O cruel Ithocles and injured Orgilus ' 
So down she drew her veil, so died." 

The presentation of Penthea's madness is 

one of the few examples of a truly artistic 

1 "Elizabethan Literature," p. 408. 

2 "The Broken Heart," iv., 4. 



THE MANIACS 91 

treatment of the subject, and "The Broken 
Heart" is one of the few post- Shakespearean 
plays which with some touches by the Master- 
hand might have become a really great romantic 
tragedy. Penthea is, to tell the truth, about as 
far inferior to Ophelia as she is superior to the 
Gaoler's Daughter. The partly unsympathetic 
presentation of her character in the first part 
of the play, the lack of picturesqueness and 
relief from the gloom of the tragedy, the suspicion 
of melodrama in the surrounding scenes and the 
involved nature of the plot — all these combine 
to place Penthea on a lower level than Ophelia. 
And, in addition, she is less important and 
hence less striking from a purely dramatic point 
of view. 

Something has already been said of the plot 
and the personages of "The Lover's Melancholy," 
but the melancholy of Palador and the madness 
of Meleander may be briefly considered here as 
furnishing additional examples of Ford's treat- 
ment of the subject. Palador's melancholy, 
which gives the title to the piece, seems to be 
largely temperamental and scarcely a case for 
the physician, though Corax, his medical 
adviser, goes to some pains to " cure " it, 
and is in consequence, hailed as a "perfect 
arts-man."^ The Prince's melancholy is thus 
described : 

1 "The Lover's Melancholy," iii., 3. 



92 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

**He's the same melancholy man 
He was at's father's death ; sometimes speaks sense, 
But seldom mirth ; will smile, but seldom laugh ; 
Will lead an ear to business, deal in none ; 
Gaze upon revels, antic fopperies, 
But is not moved; will sparingly discourse. 
Hear music ; but what most he takes delight in 
Are handsome pictures." i 

His melancholy apparently began at his father's 
death and was increased by the disappearance 
of Eroclea. We need not stay long over him. 
Corax, who is apparently a man of many theories 
and much resource, presents the Prince with a 
Masque,'* — already mentioned — in which madmen 
of various sorts pass over the stage and make 
speeches. The last of these persons is Palador'a 
lost love in disguise who appears as "Love- 
Melancholy." How far the Prince's malady is 
relieved by this is uncertain ; but the form of 
" Parthenophil " arouses memories and the 
re-appearance of Eroclea in the next act is the 
real "potent" which restores the melancholy 
lover. 

The madness of Meleander, Eroclea's father, 
is more interesting. He has, so far as we know, 
no sort of predisposition to insanity, which 
comes upon him following a cloud of troubles — 
he has been accused of treason, his lands have 

1 Ibid., i., 1. 

2 A similar device is found in Brome's play, " The 
Antipodes," where, however, the physician uses the fantastic 
but less morbid device of a " play within a play." See page 
186. 



THE MANIACS 93 

been seized and his daughter has disappeared. 
We are informed by our physician that his 
affliction is not madness ; it is 

' • His sorrows— 
Close-griping grief and anguish of the soul — 
That torture him." i 

Yet we can find in Meleander all those " signs " 

which by now we are beginning to associate 

with insanity. The unfortunate man " sleeps 

like a hare, with his eyes open," he groans, 

" thunders " and ** roars," and his " eyes roll." 

He talks wildly, yet at times coherently, knows 

his daughter Cleophila, enquires "Am I stark 

mad?" His maniacal excitability displays 

itself in his laughter, "the usher to a violent 

extremity."' The reaction soon follows; he 

faces those about him and remarks : 

" I am a weak old man ; all these are come 
To jeer my ripe calamities." 2 

At times — and this is surely the greatest praise 
we can give him — his ravings remind us of 
Lear's, with their mingled sarcasm, pathos and 
unconcealed rage. His brother's son Menaphon 
approaches him with a " Good uncle ! " What, 
outside Shakespeare, can be more like Lear 
before his eloquence goes and leaves his rage 
supreme, than Meleander's furious reply :^ 
"Fools, desperate fools I 
You're cheated, grossly cheated; range, range on, 
And roll about the world to gather moss, 
The moss of honour, gay reports, gay clothes, 

1 Ibid., iv., 2. 2 Ibid., u., 2. 3 Ibid., ii., 2. 



94 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

Gay wives, huge empty buildings, whose proud roofs 
Shall with their pinnacles even reach the stars, 
Ye work and work like moles, blind in the paths 
That are bored through the crannies of the earth, 
To charge your hungry souls with such full surfeits 
As being gorged once, make ye lean with plenty ; 
And when ye've skimmed the vomit of your riots, 
Ye 're fat in no felicity but folly; 
Then your last sleeps seize on ye; then the troops 
Of worms crawl round and feast ; good cheer, rich fare, 
Dainty, delicious I " 

How does Corax propose to cure such a 
patient as this? Spurred on by the flatteries 
of Rhetias — "a reduced Courtier" — nothing 
daunted by the picturesque report that 
Meleander "chafes hugely, fumes like a stew- 
pot,"* he coolly explains his intention of out- 
Heroding Herod — " We will roar with him, if 
he roar,"* — and suiting the action to the word 
he "produces a frightful mask and headpiece."* 
Meleander enters, armed with a poleaxe and 
raving in a vein which must have delighted 
the greediest of the groundlings. A battle of 
words and mock actions ensues, and the mad- 
man is soon reduced to a state of comparative 
calm. He lays down the poleaxe, and Corax 
removes the mask. The physician then pro- 
ceeds to minister to the mind diseased with 
tales of his own supposed mental sufferings, 
assuming apparently that like counteracts like 
in madness as in melancholy. This is to some 

1 Ibid., iv., 2. 



THE MANIACS 95 

extent true, and Shakespeare rightly repre- 
sents Lear as in a state of comparative tran- 
quillity when in the presence of Edgar. But 
Ford's play would seem to be inspired rather by 
a desire to please than by a fidelity to real life. 
The concluding scene/ however, so far as it 
concerns Meleander, is sufficient compensation, 
for again it recalls " King Lear " in its general 
nature if not in matters of detail. The madman 
has been put to sleep, his hair and beard have 
been trimmed and his gown is changed. Music, 
as in ** King Lear," is playing, and a song, full of 
delicate charm, is being sung by a Boy outside. 
At its close Meleander awakens, confused and 
half-dreaming. He is inclined to sleep again, 
but the physician hails him — somewhat boister- 
ously, one would think — and in spite of his 
patient's brusque " Away, beast ! let me alone," 
he succeeds in rousing him. The madness 
certainly appears to have left him ; he is now 
quite calm, though the burden of his troubles 
still oppresses him. 

"The weight of my disease," he says, 
Sits on my heart so heavy, 
That all the hands of art cannot remove 
One grain, to ease my grief." 
Corax has, indeed, in preparation, a cordial 
which is to effect this, but it is reserved — 
not wholly for dramatic reasons, — to a fitting 
climax. Successive messengers first bring the 
1 Ibid., v., 1. 



96 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

news that the Prince, now happy (though the 
father knows it not) in the possession of his 
love, has restored to Meleander all the honours 
he formerly enjoyed, together with new honours 
and marks of favour undreamed of. Then at 
last Eroclea is presented to him and his restored 
reason stands the test of happiness. Explana- 
tions ensue ; all part friends ; and " sorrows are 
changed to bride-songs." 

It will be seen that Ford's conception of 
madness is by no means a low one ; he has not 
debased it by making it a sport for those to 
whom it is a thing to fleer and jest at; he has 
introduced it into comedy indeed, but it must 
be remembered that Ford's tragi-comedy is 
a wholly different thing from the gross 
buffooneries of Fletcher, Dekker and Middleton, 
and that the madness of Meleander, though 
resembling that of Lear, is on a far lower scale. 
It rises now and then to unusual heights, but 
remains at their exalted level for so short a 
time that we never look at it seriously for long. 
The gloom is also lightened by the antics of the 
whimsical Corax, whose triumphs of psycho- 
medical skill would, no doubt, in happier times, 
have induced him to set up a private Bedlam of 
his own! 

In considering Chettles' "Tragedy of Hoff- 
man"* we are met by an initial difficulty of 

1 Acted in 1602 ; first printed in 1631. 



THE MANIACS 97 

authorship, for the resemblance between this 
play and "Hamlet," as well as between Lucibella 
and Ophelia, would suggest plagiarism. The 
question, however, is difficult to decide, and can 
hardly be discussed here. Whatever be the 
solution, Lucibella is a most effective character. 
To a certain degree her madness is merely 
conventional. But there are numerous touches 
of real art in her portrayal, and she is not 
degraded like the Gaoler's Daughter in **The 
Two Noble Kinsmen " by being made " a motley 
to the view." On the contrary, as one editor 
points out, Chettle surpasses Shakespeare by 
making her, unlike Ophelia, directly instru- 
mental in bringing about the denouement of 
the play. 

The madness of Lucibella is brought about 
by the murder of her lover, Lodowick, through 
the agency of Hoffman. In her mad wanderings 
she discovers the skeletons of Hoffman's father, 
and of Prince Otho, for whose death her lover's 
murderer is also responsible. Eventually the 
mischief caused by the first shock is undone by 
a second; Lucibella recovers her reason. Hear 
her in her first ravings : 

" Oh [Oh] a sword, I pray you, kill me not. 
For I am going to the river's side, 
To fetch white lilies and blue daffodils, 
To stick in Lod' wick's bosom, where it bled, 
And in mine own .... 
' We must run all away, yet all must die ' 



98 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

'Tis so; — I wrought it in a sampler. 

'Twas heart in hand, and true love's knots and words, 

All true stitch, by my troth, the posy thus — 

* No fiightf dear love, but death shall sever us.' 

Neither did that! He lies here, does he not?" 

She cannot make up her mind whether her 
lover is really dead or not. Only conscious of 
a vague calamity, she cries: 

"Tell Lod'wick, Lucibell would speak with him I 

I've news from heav'n for him, he must not die; 

I've robb'd Prometheus of his moving fire: — 

Open the door! — I must come in, and will; 

I'll beat myself to air, but I'll come in 1 " 

So saying, she knocks violently at the door of 
the vault; those who surround her fear that 
she will "do violence upon herself." She 
understands : 

"Oh, never fear me ! there is somewhat cries 

Within me, ' No ! ' tells me there're knaves abroad ; 

Bids me be quiet, lay me down, and sleep." i 
Her violence is noteworthy ; three or four men 
attempt to hold her; but she succeeds in freeing 
herself from them, and wanders abroad. 

When we next see her the second shock is 
at work and Lucibella is returning to sanity. 
Mathias, Lodowick's brother, still fears for her 
life, having seen her "clamb'ring upon the 
steepness of the rock," but what she has seen 
in Hoffman's cave has saved her mental life. 
She talks still with the fierce sarcasm of 
mania. 

Shewing the skeletons, she cries : 

1 *' Hoffman," iv., 1. 



THE MANIACS 99 

"Is it not like 
I keep a princely house, when I have such 
Fat porters at my gate." 

Still, as before, she lards her speech with scraps 

of song: 

"Here, look here! 
Here is a way goes down 1 

Down, down, down, 
Hey down, down ! " 

This ditty is reminiscent of the descent to the 
cave, but the next moment the memory of that 
is gone and only the consciousness of her loss 
remains : 

"I sang that song while Lod'wick slept with me:" 
But at length, gradually and before our eyes, 
she recovers her lost reason. Her speech to 
the Duchess of Luneberg shews what seems to 
be the wandering of her still distraught mind. 
She displays the rich clothes of Otho : 

/"A poor maiden, mistress, has a suit to you, 
And 'tis a good suit, very good apparel." 
iind she breaks into song again. But shortly 
afterwards she recognises the two corpses, and 
as Lorick unfolds the ghastly story of Hoffman's 
crime the princess comes to her right mind 
again. At the end of the scene she declares her 
complete sanity : 

"Nay I will come; my wits are mine agen. 
Now faith grows firm to punish faithless men."i 

For a moment now we may look at the 

madness of Cardenes, which enters into the plot 

1 Ibid., v., 2. 



100 ELIZABETHAN DEAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

of Massinger's " A Very Woman." He is son to 
the Duke of Messina and a rival of Don John 
Antonio, the Prince of Tarent, for the hand of 
Almira, daughter of the Viceroy of Sicily. In a 
violent quarrel with Antonio, who is enraged 
at not heing the favoured suitor, Cardenes is 
wounded — it is at first thought mortally, but he 
recovers, though for a time he loses his senses. 
Eventually he is restored by a physician named 
Paulo. We see very little of him in his mad 
condition. First we learn that his disease is 

"Melancholy 

And at the height, too, near akin to madness . . . 
. . . His senses are distracted," says Paulo, 
" Not one, but all ; and if I can collect them 

With all the various ways invention 

Or industry e'er practised, I shall write it 

My masterpiece." i 
When Cardenes actually appears,^ any maniacal 
excitement which may have disturbed him has 
disappeared, and he appears to be in a state of 
simple melancholia : 

** Farewell, farewell, for ever, name of mistress I 
Out of my heart I cross thee ; love and women 
Out of my thoughts." 

This is the burden of his discourse. Paulo 
encourages him by mild half-contradictions : 

"And yet I've heard of many virtuous women." 
But Cardenes' new-learned philosophy remains 
unchanged : 

" Not many, doctor ; there your reading fails you: 
Would there were more, and in their loves less dangers." 

1 "A Very Woman," ii., 2. 2 Ibid., iii., 3. 



THE MANIACS 101 

The treatment recommended for this " strange 
melancholy " by the physician, who is of good 
reputation and has received many gifts from 
the Duke of Messina and others, is most note- 
worthy. He is no friend of prevailing customs : 
The patient " must take air." Though, as the 
surgeons protest, "he hath lost already . . . 
much blood," 

" To choke up his spirits in a dark room, 
Is far more dangerous." 

The remainder of the cure is not unlike the 
prescription of Corax. The physician applies 
himself to all the patient's " humours," " check- 
ing the bad and cherishing the good." 
'* For these I have 
Prepared my instruments, fitting his chamber 
With trapdoors, and descents; sometimes presenting 
Good spirits of the air, bad of the earth. 
To pull down or advance his fair intentions. 
He's of a noble nature, yet sometimes 
Thinks that which, by confederacy, I do. 
Is by some skill in magic." i 
Who can wonder, for "Protean Paulo" with 
his quaint devices shews a truly super-human 
versatility. At all events, he succeeds in 
gathering the "scatter'd sense" of Cardenes, 
who thanks him profusely for having been 
*' My friar, soldier (and) philosopher. 
My poet, architect, physician." 
Paulo is indeed a disinterested and enthusiastic 
doctor, and is really more interesting than 
Cardenes himself. 

1 Ibid., iv., 2. 



102 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

The madness of Sir Giles Overreach is worth 
our notice, as being introduced merely as a 
stage device, to emphasise the defeat of the 
cruel extortioner and to serve as a climax to the 
comedy. The last act of the play, into which he 
is introduced, shows every sign at the outset of 
being the usual type of ''last act" of a tragi- 
comedy. Overreach, with "distracted looks," 
has learned how he has been tricked both 
by his creature, Marall, and by his daughter 
Margaret, who, against his will, has married 
her lover, and now appears with him, as his 
wife. The usurer is overcome by the double 
shock. "My brain turns," he cries. His rage 
passes all bounds. He attempts to kill his 
daughter and threatens to make the house "a 
heap of ashes." Flourishing his sword, he 
raves of his courage; those standing around 
are, to his disordered mind, 

" hangmen, 
That come to bind my hands, and then to drag me 
Before the judgment seat : now they are new shapes, 
And do appear like Furies, with steel whips 
To scourge my ulcerous soul. Shall I then fall 
Ingloriously and yield? No! spite of Fate, 
I will be forced to hell like to myself. 
Though you were legions of accursed spirits, 
Thus would I fly among you."i 

He flings himself on the ground, foaming and 
biting the earth, only to be disarmed, bound 
and carried "to some dark room." He will be 

1 " A New Way to Pay Old Debts," v., 1. 



THE MANIACS 103 

tended by physicians from Bedlam, who will try 

"What art can do for his recovery."! 

The climax could hardly be more effective, were 
it not for Lord Lovell, who, before winding up 
the business of the play, thinks it necessary 
to point the moral in the most objectionable 
manner, only surpassed by Massinger himself 
elsewhere : 

*' Here is a precedent to teach wicked men, 

That when they leave religion, and turn atheists, 

Their own abilities leave them." 2 

With Overreach may be compared Webster's 
Ferdinand, who, after causing his sister, the 
Duchess of Malfi, with her little children, to 
be murdered, is driven by remorse to self- 
questionings and fears, and thence to raving 
madness. Webster's presentation of insanity 
is far superior, in these scenes, to that by 
Massinger just cited. For the ravings of 
Ferdinand come upon us with the greatest force 
after the awful tragedy for which he has been 
responsible — we are spared the comments of 
Justice Greedy on the situation. Further, the 
madness of Ferdinand is what we should expect 
from one of so passionate a nature, and its 
course, as will now be seen, is depicted with 
realistic force to its terrible end. 

His insanity takes the form, so we are told, 
of lycanthropia,^ victims of which, we learn 

1 Ibid., v., 1. 2 Ibid., v., 1. 

3 " The Duchess of Malfi," v., 2. 



104 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

imagine themselves transformed into wolves and 
do deeds of violence to dead bodies; the Duke 
has already been found at night, has "howled 
fearfully " and seems in danger of his life. 
When he enters, he is persecuted by a fear of 
his shadow, which he tries unreasoningly to 
kill. The Doctor approaches him, but can do 
nothing with his patient beyond extracting 
one expression of fear : " Hide me from him ; 
physicians are like kings, they brook no contra- 
diction." But the timidity lasts but a moment, 
and Ferdinand leaves the stage in a fit of insane 
passion. 

When he reappears, it is but for a moment ; 
his words are few but tense, and recall the 
terrible crime he has committed. ** Strangling 
is a very quiet death . . . So, it must be 
done in the dark: the Cardinal would not for 
a thousand pounds the doctor should see it." 
In the next scene, he is more violent. Interrupt- 
ing a struggle between Bosola, his bloody instru- 
ment, and his brother the crafty Cardinal, he 
wounds them both, in spite of the latter's cry for 
assistance, and is himself stabbed by Bosola, 
who stigmatises him as "thou main cause of 
my undoing." In his last moments he recovers 
something of his reason. 

"He seems to come to himself," says Bosola, 
"Now he's so near the bottom." 

And in truth the last words which fall from 



THE MANIACS 105 

the Duke's lips reiterate the remorse which he 
feels for his crime. 

As concluding examples of the presentation 
of the madman, in the most usual sense of the 
word, may be taken two of Fletcher's characters 
and one of Jonson's. Fletcher's productions 
shall be considered briefly in succession: they are 
"The Passionate Madman," in the play, with that 
sub-title, usually known as "The Nice Valour,"^ 
and Shattillion in " The Noble Gentleman." 

"The Passionate Madman," who has no name 
besides, is inspired, like many of his fellows, 
rather by a desire to please the public than by 
a passion for probability. His peculiar mania 
takes the form of a succession of " fits," charac- 
terised as the "love fit," the "merry fit," the 
" angry fit " and so on. There is seldom any 
reason adduced for the change from one state 
to another, which is probably governed by the 
dramatic situation. There seems to be no 
authority for the classification of insanity in 
so many compartments in this manner; if 
the author ever thought about this at all, he 
probably arrived at a generalisation of the most 
common attribute of mania — the violent and 
rapid succession of emotions — in much the 
same way as Jonson generalised traits of 
character into "humours." 

1 It is referred to, however, in the following pages as 
"The Passionate Madman." 



106 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

The madman of this play is a kinsman to 
the Duke of Genoa. He makes his appearance 
at the end of the first act/ coming on with a 
wooden smile and making " a congee or two to 
nothing." He selects a courtier for the object 
of his affections, makes love to him as if to a 
lady, and as the object of his choice is quite 
willing to sustain the delusion, he works himself 
up to a great state of excitement. In the next 
scene^ it appears "by his flattering and his 
fineness" that "he is still in his love-fit," and 
his mistress, thinking it well to humour him, 
disguises herself as Cupid and persuades him 
that if he comes away she will make all 
ladies follow him. She really hopes to cure 
him : 

" She keeps this shape. . . . 
To see if she can draw all his wild passions 
To one point only, and that's love, the main point." 3 

She has every opportunity of trying, for at 
this moment the "love fit" obligingly gives 
way to the " angry fit." Galoshio, the clown, has 
been " almost beaten blind " by the Passionate 
Madman, "twice thrown down stairs, just 
before supper," and "pluck'd and tugg'd by 
th' hair o' th' head about a gallery half 
an acre long."^ The Passionate Lord, after 
giving this foretaste of his achievements, 
is not long in appearing, "rudely and care- 

1 "The Passionate Madman," i., 1. 2 Ibid., ii., 1. 

3Ibid., iii., 1. 4 Ibid., iii., 2. 



THE MANIACS 107 

lessly apparelled, unbraced and untrussed,"^ 
and followed by the Lady, still in disguise. The 
fit would seem at first to be one of melancholy, 
which rejects all the Lady's blandishments and 
stigmatises those of her sex as " fair mischiefs." 
As Lapet, Galoshio's master, approaches, the 
"furious fit" succeeds. Lapet is struck down and 
discreetly shams death, while the madman accom- 
panies his truncheon-blows with wild snatches 
of song. We see no more of our madman after 
this until the fifth act when the " merry fit " 
has sway. The burden of his speech is "Ha! 
ha ! ha ! " and his songs are wildly merry : he 
begins to be " song-ripe." ^ The Lady once more 
appears, followed by several others dressed as 
fools. But a cure is unexpectedly wrought 
more quickly than she could accomplish it. 
" The Soldier " (brother to Chamont, the chief 
character of the play) has been insulted by 
the madman at an earlier stage in it, and, 
much to the dismay of the Lady and her 
attendants, he now stabs the Passionate Lord, 
and makes his escape. He only re-appears at 
the end of the play, cured of his wound and 
at the same time of his madness. La Nove 
explains this to the Duke: 

1 Compare " Hamlet," ii., 1, 77, etc. 

Ophelia: "My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, 

Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac'd, 
No hat upon his head . . he comes before me." 

2 " The Passionate Madman," v., 1. 



108 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

"Death cannot be more free from passions, sir, 

Thau he is at this instant ; he's so meek now, 

He makes those seem passionate were never thought of; 

And, for he fears his moods have oft disturbed you, sir, 

He's only hasty now for his forgiveness." i 

There is little to add to this sketch, which is 
sufficiently expressive. The Lord is not in- 
teresting, still less striking, as a character; 
no attempt is made to introduce a vestige of 
reality into the madness, and thus the comedy 
leaves us unmoved. We cannot even be in- 
dignant at it— it is so feeble. 

Is it necessary to complete the story by 
adding that the Passionate Lord marries the 
Lady? 

As a slightly different example of Fletcher's 

work, we may consider his " Noble Gentleman " 

and the madman Shattillion. We can diagnose 

his case more readily than that of the Passionate 

Lord. He suffers from a kind of persecutory 

delusion, being 

"strong opinion' d that the wench he lov'd 
Kemains close prisoner by the King's command. 
Fearing her title." 2 

At the same time, he believes that certain 
enemies have designs on his life. Meeting 
his cousin Cleremont, he enquires of him his 
"faction," and being told: 

" I know no parties nor no factions, sir," 
he commands him : 

1 Ibid., v., 3. 2 "The Noble Gentleman," i., 2. 



THE MANIACS 109 

*' Then wear this cross of white, 
And where you see the like, they are my friends ; 
Observe them well, the type is dangerous." i 

A touch of the pathetic (often mingled with the 
comic), accompanies the " poor, grieved gentle- 
woman " who once refused his suit and for love 
of whom Shattillion's mind became unhinged, 
who: 

" Follows him much lamenting, and much loving, 
In hope to make him well." 2 

But, says Longueville, a courtier, 

"he knows her not, 
Nor any else that comes to visit him." 2 

Shattillion is plainly created for a dramatic 
purpose. The main story concerns the gulling 
of a gentleman named Mount-Marine by his 
wife, who persuades him that the King has 
granted him many high honours, and that he is 
Duke of Burgundy. Shattillion, whose delusions 
persuade him that he has himself a claim to the 
crown, is worked into the plot with considerable 
skill, and his quarrel in the fifth act with the 
" Duke " and his servant unites the two plots 
with great effect. 

A short study of the " mad scenes " will shew 
the strength and the weakness of this character. 
The particular form of his mania is brought out 
very clearly. The madman is perfectly sure 
about the plots laid for him; his friends are 
really enemies disguised to " sift into " his words ; 
1 Ibid., i., 3. 2 Ibid., i., 2. ~ 



110 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

he " can see and can beware " ; he has his wits 
about him and thanks Heaven for it ! The burst 
of laughter with which the audience would greet 
this assertion is at once hushed as the Lady 
laments the o'erthrow of her lover's noble mind ; 

"That was the fairest hope the French court bred, 
The worthiest and the s weetest- temper' d spirit, 
The truest, and the valiantest, the best of judgment."! 

She is remorse-stricken at being the cause of it 
all, and prays Heaven to be merciful ; she 
will do all she can to restore her lover to his 
senses. 

A long interval elapses before Shattillion is 
again introduced.'^ Now he has heard of the 
" new duke " and he is suspicious and curious, so 
much so that he is gesticulating and enquiring 
about it in the open street. The Lady appears 
and begs Madam Marine to take him into her 
house "from the broad eyes of people." She 
does so. Shattillion, now believing that he is 
** betray 'd" and about to be beheaded, is led away 
giving his last instructions. Before long, we 
see him once more, this time in Marine's house, 
proving to Marine that he (Shattillion) is of the 
blood royal, and but for the interference of his 
friends he would seize Marine as a traitor. In 
the next act he persuades Jacques, Marine's old 
servant, that he too is in danger of his life, and 
drags him into his house for shelter. As they 

1 Ibid., i., 3. 2 Act iii., So. 2. 



THE MANAICS 111 

go in, the Lady appears, and, knocking at Shat- 
tillion's door, is repulsed as another enemy. The 
madman's imagination goes so far as to see 
" some twenty musketeers in ambush," and he 
suspects his love of being their captain. Mean- 
while Jacques, disguised as a woman, is leaving 
the house, when his preserver stops him, accuses 

him of being 

"A yeoman of the guard, 
Disguised in woman's clothes, to work on me, 
To make love to me and to trap my words 
And so ensnare my life."i 

Jacques at length escapes, and after another 
adventure returns as servant to the "Duke." In 
this capacity he is forced into a fierce quarrel 
with Shattillion, who, in his furious loyalty, 
seizes Marine and throws him to the ground. 
Hereupon the Lady has a remedy to propose : 
"A strange conceit hath wrought this malady; 
Conceits again must bring him to himself ; 
My strict denial to his will wrought thiSj 
And if you could but draw his wilder thoughts 
To know me, he would, sure, recover sense." 
Longueville undertakes the charge. Assuring 
Shattillion that the King has rewarded his 
loyalty, he presents to him the Lady, who, he 
says, has been released from prison for his sake. 
Shattillion is overcome, and after a few minutes 
falls asleep. Longueville knows that this is a 
good sign : 

" His eyes grow very heavy. Not a word. 
That his weak senses may come sweetly home." 2 
1 Ibid., iv. 3. 2 Ibid., v., 1. 



112 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

He wakes, indeed, still "weak and sickly," but 
himself again. 

The general impression left by this comedy 
is, on the whole, pleasant, that part of it con- 
cerned with Shattillion included. The antics 
of the madman himself are certainly comic, 
especially on the stage, and the lighter side of 
his mania is persistently put forward. The 
only pathetic touch is, in fact, the genuine 
sorrow of his Lady. This predominance of the 
comic may be regretted, though in a play of the 
farcical nature of " The Noble Gentleman " little 
else could be expected. However, the sound, 
realistic basis of the disease, together with the 
simple and unassuming cure — which, neverthe- 
less, would hardly be successful in real life, — 
makes the treatment of Shattillion as far superior 
to the treatment of the Passionate Lord as the 
one play is to the other. Considered absolutely, 
the representation of Shattillion is chiefly 
remarkable for its reality, its skilful weaving 
into the plot, and its mingling of pathos with 
broad humour. On the other hand the pathos 
would not be so artificial if the entrance of the 
lady were somewhat less mechanical — we could 
almost certainly predict when she will enter in 
the last two acts. Fletcher's almost total blind- 
ness to everything but the comic and its possi- 
bilities also detracts from the eJffect of 
Shattillion, and the very obvious dramatic 



THE MANIACS 113 

motive for his introduction does not, on 
reflection, improve matters. 

We have now passed from the heights of 
tragedy, through its pathos, and the ill-blended 
pathos and broad humour of inferior tragi- 
comedy to the pure and simple inanity of " The 
Nice Valour " — a work which certainly appears 
to be unfinished. In considering Shattillion, we 
have risen as high as we can hope to do within 
the limits of comedy, and before leaving the 
raving lunatic for another class of madman we 
must descend slightly as we consider Ben 
Jonson's comedy of "Bartholomew Fair," and 
his madman. Trouble-all. 

The plot has already been outlined, and it 
will be seen that the place of the madman is an 
important one. Theoretically, he is of prime 
importance to the play, since it is foretold that 
Dame Pure craft, who has already had two 
suitors, shall "never have happy hour unless 
she marry within this sen'night ; and when 
it is it must be a madman," and it is Quarlousi 
dressed in Trouble-all's clothes and affecting 
his malady, who eventually marries her. As a 
matter of fact, the main portion of the play 
is concerned with other things, and we only 
meet our madman in the fourth act. From 
this point onward, the author shews great 
ingenuity in his handling of him ; the burden 
of his remarks alone serves as a point d*appui 

I 



114 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

for the spectator (who by this time is probably 
getting wearied), while the humorous situa- 
tions which he provokes, culminating in the 
acuteness of Quarlous and its success, are largely 
responsible for the undoubted popularity of the 
comedy with both reader and spectator. 

This is, of course, very much to the credit of 
a comedy which professedly deals with low life ; 
it is more to our purpose to remark that as a 
picture of madness the character of Trouble-all 
is exceptionally correct. Gifford's note to 
Cunningham's edition of Ben Jonson remarks 
that "Even the trifling part of Trouble-all, in 
any other writer than Jonson, would be thought 
deserving of praise for its correct delineation of 
a particular species of insanity, too inoffensive 
for fear and too slight for commiseration."* 
Gifford is right, both in what he states and in 
what he implies. We expect correctness from 
Jonson and we are not disappointed. 

A sketch of the madman should make this 
clear. He was "an officer in the court of pie- 
poudres last year and put out of his place by 
Justice Overdo.'"^ His affliction is marked by 
the idee fixe ; he raves continually about the 
Justice, and will do nothing — not even the 
simplest actions of daily life — without satisfying 
himself that he has Overdo's warrant for it. 
How true to life this feature is may be read in 
1 p. 210. 2 ♦' Bartholomew Fair," iv., 1. 



THE MANIACS 116 

any modern book on insanity. He appears first 
of all in the fair, where Overdo is being put into 
the stocks: "If you have Justice Overdo's 
warrant," he says, " 'tis well ; you are safe : that 
is the warrant of warrants."^ He is walking to 
and fro, with all the restless irapatience of 
mania, demanding to be shewn Adam Overdo. 
In his frantic wanderings he comes upon Dame 
Purecraft, who apparently thinks him more 
suitable for her than any madman she has yet 
seen and cries : " Now heaven increase his mad- 
ness and bless and thank it." Trouble-all's 
reply does not vary : " Have you a warrant ? an 
you have a warrant, shew it."* Person after 
person presents himself but the madman's reply 
is always the same. Every conversation he 
interrupts with his query, and, when he is 
ignored, he turns away in disgust. Once he 
exasperates a watchman, who strikes him. The 
latent rage of the lunatic shews itself, but the 
madman's rationalisation first provides it with 
an excuse : *' Strike st thou without a warrant ? 
take thou that." When Quarlous personates 
the lunatic'^ our author rightly depicts him as 
only partially successful, though his end is never- 
theless as well reached as if he had been wholly 
so. He raves occasionally about a warrant, but 
it is not hard to see his sanity peeping through 
the veil of assumed madness. Much of his talk 
1 Ibid., iv., 1. 2 Ibid., v., 2. 



116 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

is comparatively coherent, and beyond his 
occasional references to the warrant he makes 
no attempt to play the madman. To turn his 
literal phrase into metaphor, he is "mad but 
from the gown outward."* Trouble-all himself, 
when Quarlous' purpose is accomplished, makes 
one furious entry, armed " with a dripping pan," ^ 
but he does no mischief, and soon disappears. 

Trouble-all is a noteworthy character, though 
a small one ; yet, for more than one reason, the 
character is less praiseworthy than Fletcher's 
Shattillion. Considerable care is shewn in the 
sketch, but little or no sympathy ; and, if mad- 
ness is to be utilised in comedy, the comic 
element should at least, as has been seen, be 
mingled with some touches of pathos. As it 
is, any other character than the madman would 
have served Jonson equally well, provided that 
it had supplied him with the same dramatic 
advantages. When Overdo says; "Alas, poor 
wretch! how it yearns my heart for him!" we 
believe him about as readily as if Jonson had 
made the same remark in an "author's foot- 
note." 

In one respect, and in one respect only, 
can any claim be made on behalf of Jonson's 
character to rank above Fletcher's "Noble 
Gentleman." Fletcher makes us look at mad- 
ness from the point of view of the madman, 

1 Ibid., v., 3. 



THE MANIACS 117 

and tries to put us in sympathy with him. 
We have seen that he is only partially successful. 
Jonson, on the other hand, treats madness in 
quite an ohjective way, uses it frankly for a 
subsidiary dramatic purpose, and portrays his 
madman with the utmost conscientiousness and 
care. It may be just a question — though the 
writer himself does not think so — whether from 
the point of view of art Jonson's production is 
not the more praiseworthy. 

Be that, however, as it may, it is nevertheless 
absolute Ben Jonson ! 



CHAPTER V. 

Mad Folk in Comedy and Tkagedy. 
(ii.) Imbecility. 

** I ask'd her questions and she answered me 
So far from what she was, so childishly, 
So sillily, as if she were a fool, 
An innocent." 

{"Two Noble Kinsmen.'') 

Of the few sketches of imbeciles which we 
find in the drama under consideration there is 
hardly one which can properly be called a full- 
length portrait. As a class, the idiots come in 
for a fair share of attention ; the '' fool " as well 
as the " madman " is shewn us in the asylums 
of Fletcher and Middleton, but no dramatist 
seems to have thought the tragic or the comic 
possibilities of the "lunatic lean-witted fool" 
sufficiently promising to justify the inclusion 
of him as a prominent character of a play. 
This is not altogether surprising ; the imbecile — 
we shall take the term as nearly as possible in 
its precise signification* — was not considered as 
an ordinary madman ; he was treated like the 
half-developed creature he really was, looked 

1 strictly speaking, the insanity of the imbecile is con- 
genital ; the general conformation of his brain is faulty, and 
the mental phenomena of his condition are for the most part 
" dissociated from active bodily disease." (See Encyl. Brit., 
s.v. Insanity.) 

118 



IMBECILITY 119 

after more carefully than the madman, and 
trained in simple things just like a child. So 
the fool occupied a subordinate place, in drama 
as well as in life. 

The word " fool " as has been explained,* is 
used in our plays in more senses than one, 
and a few characters who answer to the descrip- 
tion ** simple," " idiot " or " imbecile " may now 
be mentioned. They demand little space, for, 
though serving a dramatic purpose, they have 
little interest or importance in themselves. 
Nearest sanity is Pogio of Chapman's " Gentle- 
man Usher," whose half-witted condition seems 
to be largely pose ; it is a strange way of carrying 
out his own dictum that ''gentility must be 
fantastical." Bergetto, too, in Ford's play, " 'Tis 
pity she's a Whore," though consistently spoken 
of as " fool's head," " dunce " and the like, could 
hardly be called anything more serious than 
a foolish fellow. Jerome, in Chettle's " Tragedy 
of Hoffman," and Cloten, the " empty purse " 
of Cymbeline, have both something of the true 
congenital idiot about them. With Jerome, 
however, our judgment is influenced more by 
impression than by anything he says or does 
in the play. Hoffman and others call him an 
" idiot," and he himself owns " They say I am 
a fool," after which he speaks of seeking out 
"my notes of Machiavell." But this is mere 
1 Above, p. 37 fit. 



120 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

foolish talk, as, indeed, are most of his speeches. 
In a quaint scene he addresses the people as 
their King, but is outdone by a later speech of 
Hoffman's, which he himself solicits saying, 
" I charge you all, upon pain of death, that you 
hear my cousin." The action of a fool, indeed, 
but was it not also the action of honest Brutus ? 
Therefore we must cling to our estimate of 
Jerome, framed from his own speeches, as justifi- 
cation for including him in this category. Both 
the actions and the words of Shakespeare's 
Cloten are those of a man mentally deficient; 
Guiderius was not far from the truth when 

he said; 

*' not Hercules 
Could have knock 'd out his brains, for he had none";i 
and everyone who knows him wonders 

'•That such a crafty devil as is his mother 
Should yield the world this ass." 2 

A quaint pair of simples may be seen in Lyly's 

" Mother Bombie." Memphio, an avaricious old 

man, has a supposed son, Accius by name, whom 

he wishes to marry to Silena ; both parties being 

mentally defective, the old man takes it for 

granted that their offspring will be sane. Silena 

is described as " no natural fool " ; and though 

this would at first seem to be untrue, it becomes 

doubtful later if the author had any very clear 

idea of the nature of her malady. She begins by 

being "passing amiable, but very simple," but 

1 "Cymbeline," iv., 2, 114. 2 Ibid., iv., 1, 57. 



IMBECILITY 121 

before long her condition approaches mania. 
Her first speech is typical : " My name is Silena. 
I care not who know it, so I do not ; my father 
keeps me close, so he does; and now I have 
stolen out, so I have; to go to old Bombie to 
know my fortune, so I will." Candius, who 
listens to her, thinks her at first a "fool," but 
decides that as " so fair a face cannot be the 
scabbard of a foolish mind," she must be mad. 
In her meeting with Accius, in the fourth act of 
the farce, she justifies this conclusion by mistak- 
ing him for a "joint-stool."^ 

Before leaving the imbeciles, we must make 
a bare mention of Shakespeare's Caliban — bare, 
because we are hardly justified in calling him a 
human being at all. The son of a witch, 

"A freckled whelp hag-bom— not honoured with 
A human shape," 2 

he is only distinguished, as Coleridge says, from 

the brutes by his dim understanding (bereft, 

however, of moral reason) and the absence in 

him of all the instincts of absolute animals. 

Schlegel gives perhaps the best account of 

Shakespeare's creation when he says : " It is as 

though the use of reason and human speech 

should be communicated to a stupid ape."^ Such 

1 Of. "Lear," iii,, 6, 54. The expression was proverbial, it 
is true. 

2 " Tempest," i., 2. 

3 It is interesting to compare the higher conception of 
Caliban seen in Browning's "Caliban upon Setebos," where, 
though the brute sprawls " with elbows wide, fists clenched 



122 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

a being as this can certainly not be classed with 
such "simples" and "fools" as have just been 
mentioned. 

To the ordinary reader of drama the word 
"fool" describes, not a natural imbecile, but a 
peculiar type of character in the tragedy and 
comedy of Shakespeare. The Shakespearean 
fool has a significance which it would be out 
of place to dwell upon here; he is, however, 
speaking generally, perfectly sane, and rather 
rich than defective in intellect. Thus he has 
nothing in common with the "naturall fooles 
. . . suted in long coats" mentioned by Nash,* 
and but little with the " fool" of many a country 
village. For this strange character is most 
often a half-demented fellow with a gift for 
making curt, cutting remarks, and a tongue 
which, since its owner fears nobody, invariably 
vents whatever his breast may forge. There 
would seem to be only one of Shakespeare's 
fools who is really half-witted, and that one is, 
of course, the fool in " King Lear." 

This point is well made by Dr. Bradley: 
"To suppose that the Fool is, like many a 
domestic fool at that time, a perfectly sane man 
pretending to be half-witted, is surely a most 

to prop his chin," in the "cool slush," he nevertheless 
reasons vaguely upon such problems as the existence of evil, 
of pain, and of a law governing the universe. 

1 In " Have with you to Saffron Walden." The "fool's 
coat " is often mentioned in our plays. 



IMBECILITY 123 

prosaic blunder. There is no difificulty in 
imagining that, being slightly touched in the 
brain, and holding the office of fool, he performs 
the duties of his office intentionally as well as 
involuntarily — it is evident that he does so. 
But unless we suppose that he is touched in the 
brain, we lose half the effect of his appearance 
in the Storm-scenes. The effect of those scenes 
(to state the matter as plainly as possible) 
depends largely on the presence of three 
characters and on the affinities and contrasts 
between them ; on our perception that the 
differences of station in King, Fool, and beggar- 
noble, are levelled by one blast of calamity; 
but also on ( . ]_orception of the differences 
between these three in one respect, — viz., in 
regard to the peculiar affliction of insanity. . . . 
The insanity of the King differs from that of 
the beggar, not only in its nature, but also in 
the fact that one is real and the other simply a 
pretence. Are we to suppose then that the 
insanity of the third character, the Fool, is in 
this respect a mere repetition of the second, 
the beggar, — that it is mere pretence? To 
suppose this is not only to impoverish 
miserably the impression made by the trio as 
a whole, it is also to diminish the heroic and 
pathetic effect of the character of the Fool."* 
If further proof were needed it could be found 
1 *' Shakespearean Tragedy," pp. 311-12. 



124 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

in the expressions and the turns of thought 
which characterise him throughout the play, — 
they are not the expressions of mania, nor 
yet of perfect self-possession; they are often, 
indeed, the expressions which one would expect 
of a feeble mind. Can one suppose, — to take 
only one example — that any sane man, even in 
the position of a Court fool, would insist, as 
mercilessly as the Fool does in the first scenes, 
upon the ingratitude of Lear's daughters? 
None of Shakespeare's other fools will be found 
to probe a wound so deep, but it is exactly what 
one would expect from a Fool whose brain is 
really slightly touched. It is true that he also 
diverts the King's attention from his troubles 
in the same scenes, but it is only to return to 
them again with an even more piercing sting. 

Still further, if we assume the actual 
imbecility of the Fool, a flood of light is at once 
thrown upon the question of his age — not that 
it matters in the least what his age is, but some 
critics have found a difficulty in reconciling the 
references which seem to make him now a boy, 
now a man. He is, in fact, a man, but his feeble 
intellect, together perhaps with a certain 
physical frailty, causes him to be treated 
occasionally as a boy, much in the same way 
that Antonio is treated by Lollio in the 
" Changeling." We need not stay longer, how- 
ever, to defend this view, for, as Dr. Bradley 



IMBECILITY 125 

says: "Arguments against the idea that the 
Fool is wholly sane are either needless or futile; 
for in the end they are appeals to the perception 
that this idea almost destroys the poetry of the 
character." ^ 

Alone, then, in this division of our subject, 
we place the Fool of " King Lear." Demented 
persons may occur here and there in our plays 
(such is Cassandra in " Troilus and Cressida ") 
and there may even be some congenital 
imbeciles (as Cloten in "Cymbeline"). But such 
cases of dementia are hard to distinguish from 
those of mania. In both cases — especially in 
the second — it is often hard to say whether or 
no the author intended the idea of idiocy to be 
conveyed. So Lear's Fool remains unrivalled 
and we are glad of it. For nowhere in drama 
is there a more delicate intermingling of 
laughter and tears, of terror and pathos, than 
in this play of "King Lear." The Fool needs 
no more lengthy description. To see him 
(whether as we watch or as we read) alone 
suffices, and nothing else will do so. When we 
have looked on him, we have seen "sunshine 
and rain at once " ; there is no " better way." 

1 " Shakespearean Tragedy," p. 312. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Mad Folk in Comedy and Tragedy. 
(iii.) Melancholy. 

*' Many new and old writers have spoken confusedly of 
it, confounding melancholy and madness." 

(Burton : '* Anatomy of Melancholy. ^^) 

The representation of " melancholy " and of 
the disease which we know as " melancholia " 
was extremely common in seventeenth century 
drama. Its popularity with playwrights of all 
kinds can be traced to several causes. In the 
first place it gave ample opportunity for intro- 
ducing poetry of no mean order, which seems to 
have been more popular on the stage a few 
centuries ago than it is to-day. Then " melan- 
choly" was commonly associated with unre- 
quited love, and the sad lover has always been 
a favourite character both in comedy and in 
tragedy. Again, a hero or heroine afflicted with 
" melancholy " was, after all, in the seventeenth- 
century acceptation of the term, quite sane. 
" Melancholy," then, became a kind of " humour " 
— as in the eyes of the mediaeval physician it 
literally had been — and it was not regarded in 
at all the same way as other species of mental 
disorder. 

We must distinguish, however, between the 

126 



MELANCHOLY 127 

variety of ways in which the word "melan- 
choly" is used in these dramas, where there 
are "large volumes of it in print to very 
slender purpose."^ When Shakespeare says in 
" Cymheline " 

'* O melancholy ! 
Who ever yet could find thy bottom? find 
The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish crare 
Might easiliest harbour in," 2 

he is expressing feelings shared by anyone who 
tries to fathom the treatment of melancholy 
by Shakespeare's own contemporaries. There 
was no common and generally recognised con- 
ception of melancholy as of the more obvious 
forms of insanity. Hence it becomes impossible 
to consider the question of melancholy from the 
standpoint of medicine, still less to make any 
division such as the threefold medical division 
of to-day, into acute melancholia, excited melan- 
cholia, and that alternation of depression and 
excitement known as " folic circulaire." We 
shall instead divide our subject more broadly 
and simply into Melancholy True and Melan- 
choly False, taking but a few typical cases to 
illustrate each of these divisions in turn. 

By Melancholy True is meant what we call 
nowadays "melancholia," — that is, a mental 
disease in which the prevailing symptom is 
depression, — a mental disease from the author's 

1 As Pate says in Brome's " Northern Lass " (v., 1). 

2 " Cymbeline," iv., 2, 203. 



128 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

point of view and not merely from ours. Some 
cases which would come under this heading 
have already, for convenience* sake, been 
treated above. There is the melancholia of 
Penthea, hardly distinguishable from mad- 
ness, and utilised dramatically in a similar 
way. There is also the melancholy of Palador, 
which seems to us less a case for the physician 
than it did to the author. Ford's conception of 
melancholy as a disease is clearly influenced by 
Burton, and he would no doubt have agreed 
with the doctors of Christopher Sly that 
*' Melancholy is the Nurse of frenzy,"* if, 
indeed, he would not have gone farther and 
declined to distinguish between them. Other 
cases of melancholia are merely described, and 
will hardly repay study. Such is Viola's well- 
known description of one (imaginary) girl who 

" Never told her love, 
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud 
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought 
And with a green and yellow melancholy 
She sat like Patience on a monument, 
Smiling at grief." 2 

Shakespeare's King John is thinking of another 
kind of melancholy when he says to Hubert : 

"... that surly spirit, melancholy, 
Had baked thy blood and made it heavy-thick." 3 

In the two characters which we shall now 

study,— Aspatia of the "Maid's Tragedy" and 

1 Induction, il., 135. 2 " Twelfth Night," ii., 4, 113, etc. 
3 "King John," iii., 3,42. 



MELANCHOLY 129 

Euphrasia in "Philaster" — we shall see that 
there is with Beaumont and Fletcher a consider- 
able lightening of the subject, with a consequent 
artistic gain, but possibly a loss in force and 
impressiveness. 

Aspatia is, of course, throughout the play, 
subordinated to Evadne, and she appears only 
in the first two acts and the last, her death 
occurring in the last scene. From her first 
appearance, after her betrothed husband has 
taken Evadne to wife at the King's command, 
the pitiableness of her situation and the nobility 
and the purity of her character endear her 
to us unchangeably. None of the indecency 
which mars the play clings to the wronged 
Aspatia; many would go so far as to consider 
her laments more effective, because less revolting, 
than those of Ophelia. Wherever we see her 

"Nothing but sad thoughts in her breast do dwell." i 
When Melantius offers her his ill-timed con- 
gratulation s on the marriage which he supposes 
to have been hers, her reply is short : 

"My hard fortunes 
Deserve not scorn ; for I was never proud 
When they were good." 2 

In the next scene, however, when the presence 

of the bride makes the hurt keener, her tongue 

is loosened. No sweeter song, in spite of the 

rather vulgar criticism of Evadne, can be found 

1 " The Maid's Tragedy," ii., 1. 2 Ibid., i., 1. 

E 



130 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

outside Shakespeare than the only one Aspatia 
gives us : 

"Lay a garland on my hearse, 

Of the dismal yew, 
Maidens, willow trenches bear; 

Say I died true ; 
My love was false, but I was firm 

From my hour of birth. 
Upon my buried body lie 

Lightly, gentle earth." i 

** Fie on't madam ! " says Evadne, " The words 
are so strange, they are able to make one dream 
of hobgoblins." 

The effect of Aspatia's appearances enhances 
enormously the effect of the play as a whole. 

*' She carries with her an infectious grief. 
That strikes all her beholders." 2 

Her father is distressed beyond measure; her 

betrothed, " servile ' iure divino ' royalist " as 

he is, is stricken with the keenest remorse. 

Even the apparently buoyant Evadne is moved 

to pity. 

Perhaps, in the scene between Aspatia and 

her waiting women, the wronged woman loses 

a little of our sympathy. The dramatists have 

evidently succumbed to the Muse of Poetry and 

Aspatia's laments become drawn-out and a little 

monotonous. Yet the poetry is at times almost 

perfect; it is only her continual harping on 

the subject of "Man, Oh that beast man!'" 

which makes us fear lest melancholy become 

1 Ibid., u., 1. 2 Ibid., i., 1. 3 Ibid., ii., 2. 



MELANCHOLY 181 

raving madness. When she subsides at last 
into "dull silence," our love for her is at its 
height: she is indeed "like Sorrow's monument.'* 

In the last act she appears once more/ in 
the disguise of a supposed brother, with the 
seeming intention of killing her faithless lord. 
A tragic Viola indeed, she succeeds in getting 
wounded, and eventually dies, not without 
witnessing the death of Evadne and holding 
Amintor's hand in token of reconciliation. 

The girl Euphrasia, in " Philaster," has less 
of tragedy and more of romance, more even 
of Shakespeare's own poetry. In her disguise 
as Bellario, Philaster's page, she appears as a 
"pretty, sad-talking boy,"^ and it would seem 
to be rather the prince, who sits " cross-armed," 
" sighs away the day " for love of Arethusa, and 
talks furthermore in several places of going 
mad,^ who should come under this category of 
melancholiacs. But he himself proves to his 
own satisfaction that he is sane enough ; and 
though such a statement is not always to be 
believed, it seems for once to correspond with 
the point of view of the author. But Euphrasia 
herself is continually reminding us of her 
melancholy, which has all the appearance of 
being conceived as similar to that of Aspatia, 
although it is less pronounced. It springs 

1 Ibid., v., 4. 2 ♦'Philaster," ii., 3. 

3 e.g. iii., 1, 277; iii., 2, 83, etc. 



132 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

from love, it is nowhere put down to a mere 
caprice, and although in neither of these two 
plays is any cure attempted, this is because 
the characters are subordinated to others and 
for the sake of a unified plot. 

The melancholy of Mistress Constance, in 
Brome's ** Northern Lass," was probably meant 
by the author to be taken more seriously than 
most people would find possible to-day. In 
conception it resembles the melancholy-madness 
of Fletcher's " Passionate Madman." Its cause, 
to go no further, is the same. Love has " over- 
whelmed her spirits, and turned the faculties 
of all her senses into a rude confusion, sending 
forth the uses of them extravagantly." The 
method of her cure, according to Pate (disguised 
as a Doctor) is as simple as are the lightning 
cures of Fletcher: "The party that she loves 
must be the doctor, the medicine and the cure." 
This medecin malgH lui, however, finds his 
patient too much for him. " I fear she is wiser 
than all of us, that have to do with her. She 
knows my gown better than I do; for I have 
had but two hours' acquaintance with it." 
Constance, though at times she sings snatches 
of song, does not rave like Shattillion or the 
Gaoler's Daughter ; the prevailing symptom of 
her melancholy is depression, As a character 
she is peculiarly lacking in charm, though 
the title-page of the play, which declares it to 



MELANCHOLY 133 

be " a comedy often acted with good applause," 
in high places, would suggest that the heroine 
was popular enough at the time. 

Almira, the daughter of the Viceroy of Sicily, 
in Massinger's " A Very Woman," might profit- 
ably be considered in a later section dealing 
with unclassified abnormal states of mind. 
However, the malady produced in her by the 
supposed loss of her lover was apparently 
conceived by the dramatist as *' melancholy- 
madness," and therefore it finds a place here. 
Gifford, in a note in his edition of Massinger, 
describes Almira's complaint as "not madness, 
but light-headedness." She is firmly convinced 
that Cardenes, who has been wounded in a 
scuffle with his rival, is dead, and all her friends' 
attempts to convince her to the contrary merely 
strengthen her belief. 

" I know you, 
And that in this you flatter me ; he's dead, 
As much as could die of him : but look yonder ! 
Amongst a million of glorious lights 
That deck the heavenly canopy, I have 
Discem'd his soul, transforra'd into a star. 
Do you not see it?"i 

The belief induces semi-hallucinations. She 
hears " a dismal sound " — it is Antonio in hell, 
" on the infernal rack where murderers are 
tormented."^ This sets a train of delusive ideas 
in motion ; her cousin fears " she'll grow into a 

1 " A Very Woman," ii., 3. 



134 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

frenzy," when one of her women exclaims " Her 
fit begins to leave her," and she is once more 
herself, relating her "strangest waking dream 
of hell and heaven."* Notwithstanding these 
temperate intervals her father is alarmed, and 
fears, not without reason, that 

" She'll do some violent act upon herself." 2 

Her hands are therefore to be bound and a 
physician sent for. We hear a good deal more of 
her melancholy during the play, but it becomes 
conventional, and after the second act we 
think of her as quite a rational human being — as 
a " Very Woman." It is the strange change in 
her affections which gives the great interest to 
her character which it certainly possesses ; for 
that reason it would hardly be fair to attempt 
to compare her either with Aspatia or with 
Euphrasia, interest in whom is dependent on 
other considerations. 

A case of melancholy, both interesting and 
amusing, similar in conception and treatment 
to the mania of Shattillion and of the Passionate 
Lover mentioned above,* is furnished by Brome's 
"Antipodes." As we should expect in an 
" approved Comedy " acted in the year 1638, the 
subject is approached only from its lighter side; 
within the limits which such a treatment 
necessarily imposes the play is pleasant enough, 
and the principal characters are very laughable. 

1 Ibid., ii., 3. 2 Ibid., ii., 3. 3 pp. 105 flf. 



MELANCHOLY 135 

Joyless and Diana, it appears, have a son Pere- 
grine, a lad of twenty-five, who has been married 
for some years to a girl named Martha. But 
Peregrine, whose inclination has always been 
for a roving life, has developed a melancholy in 
consequence of his parents' opposition to his 
desire for travel. The disease, when the play 
opens, is "inclining still to worse, As he grows 
more in days," and the father's anxiety is aggra- 
vated by the fact that Martha is also afflicted 
with a similar trouble, caused by her husband's 
neglect. Her symptoms are somewhat diffe- 
rent: 

" Indeed she's full of passion, which she utters 
By the effects, as diversely, as several 
Objects reflect upon her wand'ring fancy, 
Sometimes in extreme weepings, and anon 
In vehement laughter ; now in sullen silence, 
And presently in loudest exclamations." i 

Doctor Hughball, a physician of renown, under- 
takes both cases, and in addition that of Joyless, 
whom " some few yellow spots" about the temples 
proclaim to be "jealous-mad." This doctor, like 
others of the " cure-all " tribe whom we have 
recently encountered, has had great experience 
of mental disease. He has cured 

"A country gentleman, that fell mad 
For spending of his land before he sold it." 2 

A lady who fell mad with " tedious and pain- 
ful study " to find " a way to love her husband," 
and " horn-mad citizens, he cures them by the 

1 "The Antipodes,"!., 2. 2 Ibid., i., 1. 



136 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

dozens " !* Brought face to face with the melan- 
choliac in one of his " fits," Hughball sets about 
humouring him, "applauding" his "noble dispo- 
sition," and "adoring" his "spirit of travel." 
He tells his patient that he has been all over the 
world, even in the Antipodes, meeting his praise 
of Mandeville, Drake, and other worthies with 
vivid and imaginative descriptions of the un- 
known lands on the other side of the world. 
Everything, it appears, goes by contraries : 

"There the deer 

Pursue the hounds, and (which you may think strange), 

I ha' seen one sheep worry a dozen foxes. 

By moonshine, in a morning before day, 

They hunt, trail scents with oxen and plough with 
dogs." 2 

Peregrine is subdued ; he could listen to the 
Doctor " a whole fortnight," and gladly accepts 
his offer to travel with him to this wonderful 
land. Hence, in the next scene, by the device of 
a play within a play,^ the Doctor is able to effect 
a threefold cure. Joyless' jealousy is overcome; 
Martha (after being disguised as a Queen and 
formally presented to her husband), wins back 
the love of the melancholy Peregrine ; and Pere- 
grine himself, though falling back more than 
once during the play-scenes to "Mandeville- 
madness," is eventually cured. In the concluding 

1 Ibid., i., 1. 2 Ibid., i., 6. 

3 The scenes in which Joyless, Diana, Peregrine and the 
rest listen to this play and pass comments on it often bear a 
striking resemblance to the better known "Knight of the 
Burning Pestle." 



MELANCHOLY 137 

scenes, where music "upon the Recorders" is 
being played, we are shewn the melancholiac's 
return to complete sanity. 

"I am what you are pleased to make me; but 
withal . . . ignorant of my own condition, whether 
I sleep or wake, or talk, or dream ; whether I be, or be 
not ; or if I am, whether I do, or do not anything." i 

Revelations and recognitions follow, in spite 
of the Doctor's warning against " troubling his 
brain with new discoveries." Peregrine is then 
made to " recover roundly " by means of a short 
masque (preceded by "a most untunable 
flourish"!) introducing "Discord, Folly, Jealousy, 
Melancholy, and Madness." When these cha- 
racters have been routed by Harmony and her 
train, Peregrine declares "Indeed, I find me 
well." 

The treatment of melancholy in this play is 
in no way serious, and shews us little of real 
value. 

"Melancholy False"' is hard to define; the 

1 " The Antipodes," v., 9. 

2 A medical friend reminds me that there is, properly 
speaking, no such thing as " melancholy false," and that the 
characters mentioned under this head are not suffering, in 
his opinion, from any form of mental disease. I will there- 
fore repeat here that the classification of "melancholy" 
adopted in this chapter is not a scientific one, that it is made 
on a seventeenth century, rather than on a twentieth 
century basis — we are trying, that is, to take up the positions 
of the several dramatists. Few specialists of to-day would 
consider Jacques, Achilles or Antonio to be in a state of 
disease, but that the Elizabethan doctor would have diagnosed 
their malady as "melancholy" I have little doubt. The 
ordinary spectator would probably not consider the question 
in any detail. 



138 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

criterion must ultimately be a subjective one. 
It is depicted as a state of the mind in which 
the person concerned has full control of himself, 
— as a cloak which he assumes for his own 
purposes, and which he is able to throw off 
should necessity arise. At its very worst, it 
would only be spoken of to-day as " depression." 
Sometimes, it is true, this melancholy seems to 
give a definite colour to the person whom it 
characterises — to be, in fact, part of his 
temperament ; but in these cases no mention is 
made of any possible cure of the trouble— some- 
times not even of the cause — so that the 
suggestion of disease does not arise in the 
spectator's mind. No doubt such a condition, if 
persisted in, would often have disastrous results. 
Such a ** humour " was dangerous, but it was 
nevertheless a " humour." 

It may be objected that many persons, using 
these tests, might well put Euphrasia and 
Aspatia in the present category. It is true. 
But if we made no distinctions and adopted no 
classifications but those which were indisputable 
and self-evident, we should make very few, and 
those would be of little value. We have it on 
excellent authority that the only way to " part 
sadness and melancholy " is " by a familiar 
demonstration of the working." ^ To a layman 
it would probably be clear that the melancholy 
1 ''Love's Labour's Lost," Moth: i., 2, 9-10. 



MELANCHOLY 139 

of Aspatia and Euphrasia, of Mistress Constance 
and Almira, is meant to be of a different kind 
from that of several characters with whom we 
shall now have to deal. 

The largest variety of ** cases " is furnished 
by Shakespeare, and for this reason our study 
of this type may be confined to his works. 
Some of the " cases " are described by Dr. 
Bucknill :* " the melancholy of pride in Achilles, 
of prosperity in Antonio, of constitution and 
timidity in the Queen of 'Richard II,' of con- 
templation in Jacques." We might possibly 
add more, but here are instances enough (if they 
are really instances) to shew the nature of this 
melancholy. 

Surprise might perhaps be expressed that 
Shakespeare should make such large use of this 
" humour " ; it would be expected that he, whom 
we have shewn to be familiar with all kinds of 
insanity, would conceive of melancholia more 
nearly after the fashion of the present-day 
physician. The explanation is simple. Shakes- 
peare knew perfectly well that melancholy 
could be a disease, and has described it as 
such. Let us remember the quotations, given 
above,' from "Twelfth Night" and "King 
John." And who was it that " besieged 
with sable-coloured melancholy . . . did com- 
mend the black-oppressing humour to the most 

1 "MadFolk,"etc., p. 310. 2 p. 128. 



140 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

wholesome physic of thy health-giving air?"* 
Yet Shakespeare was equally well acquainted 
with that hypochondriacal melancholia and that 
temperamental depression which play a large 
part in modern life, and both of these, to say 
nothing of the love-melancholy which varies 
from slight depression to acute mania, he 
found it convenient to use. The contemporary 
dramatists, however great or small their know- 
ledge, usually preferred the " love melancholy " 
and used it almost exclusively. 

The melancholy of Achilles is quite superficial. 
He is "lion sick of a proud heart "^ just as Ajax 
is "melancholy without cause," and nobody in 
the play interprets his behaviour otherwise. 
The estimate just quoted of him is one of the 
least violent of the opinions of Ajax ; Agamemnon 
calls him " over - proud and under - honest " ; ^ 
Ulysses says that he is 

" possess' d . . . with greatness 

And speaks not to himself but with a pride 

That quarrels at self -breath. "4 

Ulysses' descriptions of the general's occupations, 
of his jests at Agamemnon and the Greeks, of 
his delight in Patroclus' imitations, and the 
"loud applause" which comes from his "deep 
chest"' are sufficient proof that his malady 
is not very serious. Certainly, judging from the 

1 " Love's Labour's Lost," 1., 1, 233, etc. 

2 *♦ Troilus and Cressida," ii., 3, 92, etc. 

3 Ibid., ii., 3, 132. 4 Ibid., ii., 3, 180. 5 Ibid., i., 3, 161, etc. 



MELANCHOLY 141 

care with which Shakespeare demonstrates the 
nature of its source, we shall conclude that this 
melancholy is presented to us as a ** humour." 

The ** Merchant of Venice " is coloured by 
the sadness of its hero, even at the height of 
his prosperity. At the outset of the play he 
declares to his friends : 

" In sooth, I know not why I am so sad ; 
It wearies me; you say it wearies you; 
But how I caught it, found itj or came by it, 
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is bom, 
I am to learn. 

And such a want-wit sadness makes of me 
That I have much ado to know myself." i 

We at least are not at a loss to explain Antonio's 

depression. It is not alone the boredom of 

" unruffled prosperity " ^ — this sorts ill with the 

character of the noble merchant: it is rather 

a peculiarity of temperament which colours 

both adversity and prosperity. For such 

melancholy as marks Antonio's farewell to 

Bassanio : 

'*I am a tainted wether of the flock, 
Meetest for death," 3 

is not the necessary concomitant either of 

prosperity or of adversity. The two speeches 

quoted are examples of the same condition of 

mind; the melancholy which they exhibit has 

the double dramatic purpose of beautifying the 

character of Antonio and of giving the spectator 

1 " Merchant of Venice," i., 1, 1, etc. 

2 Bucknill, " Mad Folk," etc., p. 307. 

3 " Merchant of Venice," iv., 1-114, etc. 



142 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

that " preadjustment " which is so valuable an 
aid to the plot. 

Similarly we have in " Richard II " the 
melancholy of the Queen, which prepares us 
for the troubles about to befall her. This 
melancholy may best be attributed, not neces- 
sarily, as Dr. Bucknill suggests, to her tempera- 
ment, certainly not to any prosperity she may 
have enjoyed, but rather to a vague fear as to 
the results of her husband's perilous journey, 
coupled possibly with her experience of the 
King's rashness and a recognition of his 
recent weakness in dealing with Mowbray and 
Bolingbroke. It is, at all events, merely a 
passing sadness of the "inward soul" and her 
*' heavy sad"-ness is soon dispersed, changing 
first to real grief, which gives place before her 
weaker husband — true woman that she is ! — to 
a resolution concealing for a time her sorrow. 

In Jacques we have a character of more 

complexity. His humour he describes as "a 

melancholy of mine own, compounded of many 

simples, extracted from many objects, and 

indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels 

in which my often rumination wraps me in 

a most humorous sadness."^ He wishes, in his 

own words, to 

"Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, 
If they will patiently receive my medicine." 2 

1 " As You Like It," iv., 1, 15, etc. 2 Ibid., ii., 7, 60. 



MELANCHOLY 143 

But the Duke, usually so gentle, is quite out of 
sympathy with the pseudo-reformer. Jacques, 
he says, has been a libertine, and like many 
a reformed sinner, the ex-voluptuary would 
merely " disgorge into the general world," " all 
the embossed sores and headed evils " of his 
unregenerate days.'^ 

So much discussion has been lavished on the 
** case" of Jacques that we shall not attempt to 
do more than shew what we believe to be its 
perfectly superficial nature. Judging from the 
play as a whole, and more especially from the 
Duke's contempt and Rosalind's banter, we 
should suppose this to be Shakespeare's view. 
As Dr. Moulton very justly remarks, egotism is 
plainly shewn to be at the root of his disposition. 
He has lived out his life in a short time ; now he 
turns everything, for sheer self-love, into matter 
not for jests but for scurrilous abuse, or at best 
for a malevolent, sarcastic humour. 

Yet the morbidity of Jacques' melancholy 
suggests that, more than any other of Shakes- 
peare's similarly conceived characters, he carries 
about with him a secret malady when he persists 
in his attitude towards the world. One day the 
secret wound will fester ; his "weeping " and his 
" sullen fits " will become uncontrollable ; his 
frantic abuse will turn to frenzy ; his ironic, 
half - humorous sallies will change to the 

1 Ibid., ii., 7, 67-9. 



144 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

disconnected utterances of a maniac; or his 
surly humour will sink lower and lower until 
it reaches the dead level of melancholic de- 
pression. 

Here, then, we have, in briefest outline, some 
of the types of melancholy — true and false — 
presented by Shakespeare and certain of his 
contemporaries. Numerous examples from 
other authors of the time might be added, but 
we have seen enough to be clear on two points. 
These are, the essential difference between the 
true and the false melancholy, and the use of 
each to the dramatist in his work, both for its 
own sake and because of the opportunities which 
it gives for the introduction of poetical passages. 
From the character who entertains a "wilful 
stillness " 

' ' With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion 
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,"! 

to the true victim of his sorrow, holding, against 
his will (like Constance in " King John ") 

** The eternal spirit . . . 
In the vile prison of afflicted breath," 2 

the melancholiac has great dramatic possibili- 
ties, of which, for the most part, the fullest 
advantage is taken. 

This seems to be the most convenient place 
to discuss the question of the real (as dis- 
tinguished from the assumed) mental condition 

1 "Merchant of Venice," i., 1-91, 2. 

2 " King John," iu., 4, 18. 



MELANCHOLY 145 

of Hamlet. That it is an abnormal condition most 
careful readers of the play will not question. 
How otherwise can we explain his habitual 
inaction, his sudden fits of energy, his violence 
to those whom he loves, his strange self -question- 
ings, and his even stranger apathy to those 
things which should most move him? The 
whole question of the cause of Hamlet's pro- 
crastination depends on our estimate of his 
mental state. Goethe's description of Hamlet 
as "a beautiful, pure, noble, and most moral 
nature, without the strength of nerve which 
makes the hero," is clearly at variance with 
facts, and the estimates of both Coleridge and 
Dowden largely ignore the practical side of the 
character of Hamlet. Only by recognising what 
the play certainly tells us, that the melancholy 
of Hamlet is really a disease, can we obtain 
anything like a reasonable explanation of his 
strange movements. After all, he is not the 
one-sided, unequally-developed weakling that 
certain school editions of Shakespeare would 
have us suppose. He is, without any doubt, 
a man of practical ability, capable of prompt, 
energetic action, skilled in all manly exercises. 
Intellectually, his "noble mind" compels the 
greatest regard, he has studied long at the 
University and possesses besides such qualities 
as would serve him admirably as ruler of Den- 
mark. Fortinbras says of him that 



146 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

*• He was likely 
Had he been put on, to have proved most royally ." i 

His moral nature is equally praiseworthy. 
Ordinarily strong of will, "most generous and 
free from all contriving,'"^ though probably at 
times inclined to be passionate and on occasions 
headstrong to excess, he was certainly not the 
man to procrastinate through "losing himself 
in labyrinths of thought " as Schlegel asserts 
him to have done. 

If we would find the key to this mystery, 
Hamlet himself will give it us in his first 
soliloquy. He meditates suicide, from which 
he is only kept by the fact that "the Ever- 
lasting" has "fix'd His canon 'gainst self- 
slaughter."^ Then he explains why everything 
to him is " weary, stale, flat and unprofitable " — 
it is the terrible shock of his mother's incestuous 
marriage following that of the death of his 
father, and the suspicious circumstances which 
attended it, that has given rise to this abnormal 
state of mind. His melancholy is augmented by 
the nature of the command laid on him by the 
Ghost and the consequent secrecy which he 
must put upon himself : 

" But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue." 4 
This is Melancholy True — a state of mind which 

1 "Hamlet," v., 2, 408. 

2 Ibid., iv., 7, 136— the King's testimony. 

3 Ibid., i., 2, 131-2. 
♦ Ibid., i., 2, 159. 



MELANCHOLY 147 

cannot be thrown off like a cloak, yet which is 
abnormal. It is an excellent case for the patho- 
logist. Truly conceived, it furnishes the only 
satisfying explanation of the strange phases of 
Hamlet's so-called "character" — the depression, 
the self-weariness, the irritability, the violence, 
the satisfaction at the smallest thing achieved, 
the impossibility of carrying out the original 
purpose — all these things are the natural out- 
come of melancholia. 

A two-fold objection to this view has to be 
met. It will be said that such a conception of 
Hamlet destroys the moral lesson of the play. 
And would that it did ! It is unfortunate that 
certain critics are unable to pick up a play 
without looking at once for the moral. Those 
who have done this with "Hamlet" have suc- 
ceeded in shifting the centre of gravity from 
the author to themselves. They say that the 
play shews how wrong it is to procrastinate, and 
how by procrastination we lose far more than 
we gain. It is, according to these critics, a 
mere sermon preached on the text 

" That we would do 
We should do when we would." i 

How, they say, can this sermon be preached if 

the chief illustration — the man by whom we are 

all to be warned — is exculpated from blame by 

illness ? 

1 ♦'Hamlet," iv., 7, 119-20. 



148 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

They know little of tragedy — or at least of 
Shakespeare's tragedy — who hold a view like 
this. What Shakespeare habitually does is to 
shew us a man, by nature fitted to be a hero of 
tragedy, with a fatal defect, the consequences of 
which are worked out in the play. Looked at 
from this point of view, the sentimental objec- 
tion at once vanishes, and the second objection 
arises. It is a more serious one: Can a man 
suffering from melancholia— to put the thing in 
its most prosaic form — any more than a man 
suffering from any other form of insanity, be 
admitted as a tragic hero ? The answer is that 
he can. And this partly because his exact state 
of mind is not determined, partly because it is 
a condition not generally recognised as one of 
disease, and tragedy has always to be considered 
from the point of view, not of the doctor, but of 
the author and the audience. As Dr. Bradley, 
who very ably sums up the question, says in his 
Lectures on Shakespearean Tragedy: "The man 
who suffers as Hamlet suffers — and thousands 
go about their business suffering thus in greater 
or less degree — is considered irresponsible 
neither by other people nor by himself: he is 
only too keenly conscious of his responsibility. 
.... Hamlet's state is not one which a 
healthy mind is unable sufficiently to imagine. 
It is probably not further from average ex- 
perience, nor more difficult to realise, than the 



MELANCHOLY 149 

great tragic passions of Othello, Antony or 
Macbeth."^ 

Before we leave Hamlet, it should be empha- 
sised that the state of mind of the hero is quite 
a subordinate question in the play itself. "It 
would be absurdly unjust to call * Hamlet' a 
study of melancholy, but it contains such a 
study," is Dr. Bradley's way of putting it.*^ The 
significance of this is that we must not expect 
the indications of Hamlet's disease to be 
developed to any degree, nor refuse to claim for 
it a place among our examples of "Melancholy 
True," just because the author fails to introduce 
the hero to a physician ! ° 

1 "Shakespearean Tragedy," p. 121. 2 Ibid., p. 121. 

3 Beside the melancholy of Hamlet we might place 
that of Haraldus, the young Prince of Shirley's play, 
"TTie Politician,'' were it not that the part played by his 
melancholy is purely nominal. His father — the Politician — 
sends two courtiers to cure him, and they make him drunk. 
His excesses bring on a fever which causes his death. His 
likeness to Hamlet only strikes us here and there, and the 
melancholy, such as it is, is caused chiefly by the discovery 
that he is a bastard. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Mad Folk in Comedy and Tragedy— 

(iv.) Delusions, Hallucinations and other 

Abnormal States. 

"How now; who's there? spirits, spirits?" 

(*' Spanish Tragedy.'*) 

Delusions and hallucinations occurring in 

cases of real madness we have already 

encountered, but since these phenomena are 

themselves symptoms of a disordered state of 

mind we must not neglect instances in which 

they occur with persons otherwise sane. These 

spring to the memory; who, for example, can 

ever forget the sights which Faustus sees in 

his last hour on earth ? 

" O, I'll leap up to my God; who pulls me clown? 
See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament. 
One drop would save my soul, half a drop — Ah, my 

Christ ! 
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ! 
Yet will I call on Him: Oh, spare me, Lucifer 1 
Where is it now ? 'tis gone : And see where God 
Stretcheth out His arm, and bends His ireful brows ; 
Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me, 
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God."^ 

More examples of such hallucinations in 
moments of great stress might be quoted. 
It will best serve our purpose if we consider 

1 Dr. Faustus, 1. 1419, etc. (Oxford text.) 
150 



DELUSIONS, HALLUCINATIONS, ETC. 151 

one typical case (Frank, in " The Witch of 
Edmonton,") and afterwards discuss a case of 
special interest — that of Shakespeare's Macbeth. 

Frank Thorney, in " The Witch of Edmon- 
ton," has married one Winifred, but is forced 
into a bigamous marriage with Susan, whom 
he afterwards murders, without letting any 
suspicion fall on himself. He is tormented on 
his sick-bed by phantoms indistinguishable 
from realities, more particularly by the ghost of 
Susan, and at last reveals to Winifred the 
awful truth. 

"I am not idle," he says, and he is right. 
But thick-coming fancies disturb him. The 
ghost of Susan appears. He stares at it fixedly, 
then turns to the other side, only to be con- 
fronted again by the apparition. When it 
vanishes he is raving of ** a force in which were 
drawn a thousand ghosts, leap'd newly from 
their graves, to pluck me into a winding-sheet." 
He has, so he says, " Some windmill in my 
brains for want of sleep," but sleep only comes 
with the unburdening of the guilty conscience.* 

Macbeth (like Frank Thorney) is at no time 

1 The insanity of Ann Katcliff, in this play, may also be 
noticed, thought it is of the same rude type as that of Greene's 
Orlando. " See, see, see," she cries, "the Man in the Moon 
has built a new windmill, and what running there's from all 
quarters of the city, to learn the art of grinding." The only 
feature of interest in her frenzy is the expression of physical 
pain which we noticed in " King Lear." Her ribs are like to 
break, and "there's a Lancashire horn-pipe in my throat. 
Hark how it tickles it, with Doodle, doodle, doodle, doodle," etc. 



152 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

in the play insane, but he becomes the victim 
of "horrible imaginings" which beyond a certain 
point seem to him to be real/ Macbeth is 
predisposed to hallucinations by a remarkably 
vivid power of imagination, which finds ex- 
pression from the very outset of the play. The 
mere suggestion of the murder of Duncan he 
describes as a "horrid image" which unfixes 
his hair and makes his seated heart knock at 
his ribs, against the use of nature. Thus we 
have a character whose imagination torments 
him throughout his career of crime till he has 
•' supped full of horrors " and the " taste of 
fears" has almost lost all significance.^ 

In the well-known " Dagger Scene " ^ we are 
confronted with the first of Macbeth' s hal- 
lucinations. It is before the murder of Duncan, 
and the spectral dagger only deceives him for 
a moment. Making an unsuccessful attempt 

1 With Macbeth might be compared two other remorse- 
stricken murderers in little known plays. Glapthome's 
*' Albertus Wallenstein" is the story of a man who causes 
his son and his son's betrothed to be killed and is then 
haunted by his crimes. His soul "is shaken with a nipping 
frost"; he mistakes his son's page for a ghost and murders 
him; after this false visions of spirits are ever before him. 
Only when mortally wounded by conspirators is his mind at 
rest. In Denham's "Sophy" (which is in spirit outside our 
period, though it was acted in 1641), Abbas, King of Persia, is 
likewise tormented by the ghosts of those whom he has 
murdered. Abbas, unlike Macbeth and Wallenstein, is quite 
a maniac, and does not recover his senses before his death. 

2 cf. "Macbeth," v., 5, 9, etc. " I have almost forgot the 
taste of fears . . ." 



DELUSIONS, HALLUCINATIONS, ETC. 153 

to clutcli it, he is for a short moment at a 

loss to explain a weapon which he can see 

but cannot handle. Then he rightly concludes 

that it is but a *' dagger of the mind, a false 

creation " ; his eyes " are made the fools o' the 

other senses," yet the image does not disappear 

till courage comes again and with it " the heat 

of deeds." 

Duncan is murdered ; " after life's fitful fever 

he sleeps well," but the regicide's better self 

torments him more and more, and the Lady 

fears for his sanity : 

*' These deeds must not be thought 
After these ways ; so, it will make us mad." i 

Macbeth, however, is losing his self-control. 
At the moment of the murder a fresh hallucina- 
tion troubled him, and though its true nature 
is now recognised, and he can " moralise " upon 
it, its very mention fills the Lady with fears. 
** Methought I heard a voice cry, * Sleep no more ! 
Macbeth doth murder sleep'. . . . 
Still it cried, * Sleep no more 1 ' to all the house : 
* Glamis hath murther'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor 
Shall sleep no more ; Macbeth shall sleep no more. '"2 

Dr. Bucknill, it is true, considers that this is 

not an hallucination, on account of the word 

" methought." * But the same word would have 

been used of the dagger, which the critic 

himself admits to have been an hallucination. 

Nor is the length of the fancied speeches any 

1 " Macbeth," ii., 3, 32-3. 2 Ibid., ii., 2, 35, etc. 

3 " Mad Folk," etc., p. 20. 



154 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

obstacle, the greater part of the speech in which 
they occur being Macbeth's own embellishment 
of the event. 

The hallucination at the banquet is more 
formidable. Macbeth, having caused Banquo 
to be murdered — the murder being unknown to 
his guests — is regretting his absence, " thus by 
a voluntary mental act calling before his mind's 
eye the image of the murdered man." ^ At the 
mention of him, an image rises in the place 
reserved for Macbeth himself. It shakes its 
" gory locks " at the murderer, it nods but will 
not speak, and only vanishes like the "air- 
drawn dagger," when Macbeth begins to over- 
come his fear and brave it. When he pledges 
Banquo it appears again ; once more he declaims 
violently against it and it vanishes, but not 
before he has 

. . " displac'd the mirth, broke the good meeting 
With most admir'd disorder." 2 

to say nothing of a certain amount of suspicion 
attached to it. 

The remainder of the story, from the psycho- 
logical point of view, can best be told in Dr. 
Bucknill's words.^ " Macbeth," he says, " saved 
himself from actual insanity by rushing from 
the maddening horrors of meditation into a 
course of decisive resolute action. From hence- 

1 Ibid., p. 24. 2 " Macbeth," iii., 4, 109. 

3 "Mad Folk," etc., p. 29. 



DELUSIONS, HALLUCINATIONS, ETC. 155 

forth he gave himself no time to reflect; he 
made the firstlings of his heart the firstlings of 
his hand; he became a fearful tyrant to his 
country ; but he escaped madness. This change 
in him, however, e^ffected a change in his rela- 
tion to his wife, which in her had the opposite 
result. . . . Her attention, heretofore directed 
to her husband and to outward occurrences, was 
forced inwards upon that wreck of all-content 
which her meditation supplied." She becomes 
mad; no medicine can minister to her mind, 
diseased by crime and remorse, and her madness 
is fatal. But Macbeth never becomes insane. 
" Some say he's mad," it is true, yet 

" others, that lesser hate him, 
Do call it valiant fury."i 

He has saved his own mental life, but he has 
flung away the " eternal jewel " of his soul. 

Lady Macbeth, at every point in the play, is 
strongly contrasted with her husband. She is 
frankly distressed at the developments of Mac- 
beth's criminal career. He bids her be "innocent 
of the knowledge " till she applaud his deeds. 
She thus drifts farther away from him and 
leaves him to pursue his bloody course alone. 
Her meditation breeds madness. She lacks, 
even as her husband had done, 

, . "the season of all natures, sleep," 

being 

"Troubled with thick-coming fancies 
That keep her from her rest." 2 
1 "Macbeth," v., 2, 13. 2 Ibid., v., 2, 37-8. 



156 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

The scene in which she betrays her secret in 
her sleep is full of significance, shewing the 
terrible impression made on her by the murder 
of Duncan, and no less by the slaughter of Lady 
Macduff. After her fainting fit, which follows 
the discovery of Duncan's murder, she ceases 
to occupy a prominent place in the tragedy. 
Her death is almost unnoticed. Whether she 
died naturally or whether her attendants were 
unable to keep from her the "means of all 
annoyance," it is hard to say. But once 
again Shakespeare shews his dramatic skill in 
relating rather than portraying the scene of her 
death. 

Returning to Macbeth, one must remark in 
conclusion that it is only when Shakespeare's 
art in delineating the various types of insanity 
is studied as a whole that this character can be 
fully appreciated. Yet even from a superficial 
examination of the play the value to the drama- 
tist of Macbeth's hallucinations must be clear. 
For they not only add to the scenic effect of the 
play, but they constitute a striking contrast 
between the murderer and his wife, besides 
clarifying the already powerful idea of his 
accusing imagination. 



DELUSIONS, HALLUCINATIONS, ETC. 157 

We must now briefly consider another kind 
of abnormality which has not yet been men- 
tioned. Occasionally, in reading the dramatists 
of the period, we meet with persons whom at 
first we suppose to be insane, but who are, in 
reality, not so. Yet their states of mind are 
far from normal. Occasionally they seem to 
be possessed by insane desires and ambitions; 
sometimes lust has taken complete possession 
of them; sometimes remorse, vengeance or 
similar passion dominates all their actions. 
It is hard to point to any of their actions and 
to say : " That is the act of a madman." To-day, 
no doubt, did they exist in the flesh, they would 
be removed to a Mental Hospital and treated for 
disease of the mind. But looked at by their 
author and by his audience and in an Eliza- 
bethan environment, they were not, in all 
probability, and in the ordinary sense of the 
word, madmen. And for that reason we can 
only allow them a passing consideration here, 
though every one of them would repay detailed 
study. 

One or two examples may be cited from 
Shakespeare — the first being Constance, in "King 
John." Dr. Bucknill, without the least hesita- 
tion, styles her mad, — but he is a physician. 
Shakespeare, who may be supposed to have 
known better, represents her as passionate by 
nature, and half-demented with grief. But she 



168 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

is never more than half-crazy, always retaining 
sufficient of her native strength of will to 
control her wonderful imagination. Her own 
explanation of her conduct : 

" Grief fills the room up of my absent child," i 
is quite sufficient. Her reply to Pandulph's 
accusation, 

"Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow," 2 

is conclusive proof that she is to be regarded as 

sane. She does not, like many a lunatic, merely 

protest that she is not mad ; she gives what, 

according to the standard of the day, would pass 

as clear evidence of her sanity : 

"I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine; 
My name is Constance ; I was Geffrey's wife ; 
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost! 
I am not mad ; I would to heaven I were ! 
For then, 'tis like I should forget myself . . . 
If I were mad, I should forget my son. 
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he. 
I am not mad ; too well, too well I feel 
The different plague of each calamity." 3 

Constance, even when her blemishes are 
taken into account, is a sublime figure. At 
times the poet's instinct seems for a moment to 
fail him; his touch is less sure and his Fury 
becomes dangerously like a common scold. But 
at her best she is unsurpassed, and if we wonder 
at the skill with which Shakespeare portrays 
and utilises true madness on the stage, we 
must not forget to withhold a portion of our 

1 " King John," iii., 4, 93. 2 1. 43. 3 U. 45, etc. 



DELUSIONS, HALLUCINATIONS, ETC. 159 

admiration for his sure-footed walk on the 
border line. 

Timon of Athens, too, is a wonderful 
character — the wonder of the play. A good- 
natured, generous and wealthy noble, he has 
attracted to him crowds of parasites whom he 
calls friends, but who in reality do nothing but 
receive his favours. At length he discovers 
their essential baseness, and becoming, in his 
own words, " misanthropos " who ** hates man- 
kind,"* leaves Athens, with oaths and curses, 
for a cave near the sea-shore. There he ends 
his days — the manner of his death is uncertain. 
His friends consider him beyond all doubt 
insane. A creditor says that his debts "may 
well be called desperate ones, for a madman 
owes 'em";^ others sum the matter up tersely 
by saying **Lord Timon's mad."^ Alcibiades 
excuses Timon's behaviour on the ground that 

•'his wits 
Are drown'd and lost in his calamities." 4 

Only Flavins, his faithful steward, gives no hint 

that he considers his lord insane, though even 

he is struck with Timon's unhappy condition, 

so "full of decay and failing.'" Flavins, in this 

as in other particulars, seems, like Ulysses, in 

"Troilus and Cressida" and other characters in 

different plays, to be Shakespeare's mouthpiece. 

1 ••Timon of Athens," iv., 3, 53. * Ibid., iv., 3, 88. 

2 Ibid., iii., 4, 101-2 5 Ibid., iv., 3, 465. 

3 Ibid., iii., 6, 129. 



160 ELIZABETHAN DKAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

There is nothing in his representation of Timon 
which gives us cause to impute madness to the 
protagonist. His state of mind is one of acute 
depression, which we should call melancholia, 
were there any hint that such a conception 
entered into the mind of the author. The con- 
dition of Timon is not unlike that of Hamlet, 
and we could easily understand his feigning 
madness to avoid the real evil coming upon 
him. 

If any further proof were needed that Timon 
is not a maniac his speeches would suffice. The 
objection that "all satire upon the hollowness 
of the world would lose much of its point if it 
came from the lips of an undoubted lunatic,"* is 
perfectly valid. In "King Lear" the speeches 
which contain the most sarcasm, as well as the 
most poetry, are those of the earlier scenes, in 
which Lear has not yet become entirely a 
maniac. This kind of speech is characteristic 
of Timon to the end. His very last words, 
though lacking the force of the first outburst, 
are equally coherent and contain far more 
poetry : 

"Come not to me again: but say to Athens, 
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion 
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood; 
Who once a day with his embossed froth 
The turbulent surge shall cover; thither come 
And let my gravestone be your oracle. 

1 Raised and disputed by Bucknill, "Mad Folk," etc., p. 259. 



DELUSIONS, HALLUCINATIONS, ETC. 161 

Lips, let sour words go by and language end : 
What is amiss plague and infection mend ! 
Graves only be men's works and death their gain! 
Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign." i 
A character far more repulsive, but depicted 
with the greatest force, is Malefort Senior, of 
Massinger's " Unnatural Combat." Malefort is 
an Admiral of Marseilles who is challenged 
by his apostate son to a duel and comes off 
victorious, the son being slain. Shortly after- 
wards, Theocrine, Malefort's daughter, is sought 
in marriage by the son of the Governor; the 
father consents, but his strange extravagances 
towards her, as he loads her with jewels, riches 
and a superfluity of caresses, is generally com- 
mented upon, and before long it appears that he 
has fallen in love with her. The remainder of 
the plot hastens to the catastrophe, Theocrine 
being dishonoured and virtually murdered by a 
false friend of her father's. Malefort himself is 
persecuted by ghosts, and is finally killed by a 
flash of lightning. 

A modern author would no doubt represent 
such a character as Malefort as suffering from 
some mental disease, but Massinger appears to 
have considered the unnatural passion of the 
father for his daughter as the fruit of the 
unnatural combat in which he kills his son. 
He cares more for the development of this idea 
than for the mental condition of Malefort, who 
1 "Timon of Athens," v., 1, 217, etc. 

M 



162 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

speaks, in one place, of his son's blood as growing 

upon him like Hercules' poisoned shirt, though 

he seems also to feel an inward cause of his 

passion which he cannot explain. Montreville, 

the false friend, supposes that he may be mad, 

and recommends: 

"A deep-read man, that can with charms and herbs 
Restore you to your reason." i 

But from the general character of the play it is 

easy to see that he is not considered insane. 

Here, then, we have an attempt made to 
subject an outrageous and unnatural passion, 
the manifestations of which bear at times the 
closest resemblance to mania, to the dramatic 
treatment of tragedy. That Massinger has 
wholly succeeded, few would be rash enough to 
assert. He has given us a grim and ghastly 
picture, full of brute strength but wanting in 
that higher power which restrains and subdues. 
He has created a character at times human, 
always terrible, but only partially effective in 
the highest sense of the word. 

It is probable that if Constance and Malefort 
had been portrayed as mad and not merely as 
possessed by an overpowering passion, the result 
in each case would have been a considerable 
dramatic gain. The death of the Lady Constance 
" in a frenzy " — like the deaths of Lady Macbeth 
and the Queen in " Cymbeline " — is only reported 

1 "The Unnatural Combat," iv., 1. 



DELUSIONS, HALLUCINATIONS, ETC. 163 

by a messenger. Had that frenzy actually been 
depicted, the result would have been a weakening 
of the whole plot, but a decided increase in the 
effectiveness of Constance, In the two plays 
which we shall now consider, a comparatively 
poor theme is treated in such a way that the 
passion portrayed is heightened, — without being 
raised, however, to the level of madness. It is 
interesting to speculate on the result had this 
been done — whether the madness would have 
elevated the drama or whether the paucity or 
the inconsequence of the theme would have 
debased the presentation of insanity. 

Grimaldi, the remorse-stricken renegade of 
Massinger's play "The Renegado," who first 
immures a young girl, and afterwards repents, is 
reduced in the fourth act to a state approaching 
insanity. He is a poor sort of creature, at any 
rate until the concluding portion of the play, 
where he contrives a remarkable stratagem 
which brings about the denouement. His 
remorse bears many of the signs of madness, 
and indeed may have been intended for such by 
the author. For days he has taken no food ; the 
mention of the words "church" and "high 
altar" increases his melancholy; his speech ends 
ever with " those dreadful words damnation and 
despair."^ His "ravings" lead him to contem- 
plate all kinds of extravagances ; he would do a 
1 "The Kenegado," iv., 1. 



164 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

"bloody justice" on himself, pull out his eyes, 
lop off his legs, and give his body to those whom 
he has injured. He does none of these things, 
however, — a Jesuit priest, habited like a Bishop, 
curing him by the very simple means of 
granting him absolution. The wild ravings give 
place to calmer expressions of contrition and he 
goes off with a riming couplet ! It is unnecessary 
to follow him ; one only wishes that the extreme 
nature of his remorse had not made it advisable 
for us to include such a creature, for whom little 
can be felt but contempt. 

Our last example is Memnon, in Fletcher's 
play, " The Mad Lover." Here is a character for 
whom we cannot help entertaining some regard, 
but we are at a loss to know what exactly to 
make of him. If he is really mad, as seems at 
first sight unlikely, it is a very unreal kind of 
madness, with more dramatic purpose than 
realism. One of the characters, indeed, calls 
him " stupid mad," and the term is not an inapt 
one. We should be inclined to group him with 
the pretenders, but for three considerations. 
Firstly, he never declares nor even hints to 
anyone that he is not what he seems, as Hamlet 
does to Horatio and as Memnon himself might 
with perfect ease have done — for example, to 
Siphax. Then his recovery, however sudden, 
complete and unreal, is only the sort of thing 
one would expect from Fletcher, and may be 



DELUSIONS, HALLUCINATIONS, ETC. 165 

left out of the question. Lastly, in the scene 

where he refuses the whore, it is true that he 

shews considerable sagacity and discrimination. 

Nevertheless it is no more than has actually 

been found in "cases" arising from the same 

cause as Memnon's. Yet obviously, as we shall 

see, the mad lover is not mad in the acceptation 

of the word then common, and the hypothesis 

of an abnormal passion will meet the case, 

better perhaps than if we consider our hero 

either mad or sane. 

The plot has already been sketched, and a 

few references should make this statement 

clear. The lover's rude courtship is the fruit 

of long campaignings and absence from court ; 

when he is told by his friend of the strange 

impression he has made he speaks perfectly 

rationally and merely becomes confirmed in his 

purpose. The extravagant idea of cutting out 

his heart is the first sign of the strength of his 

passion. Yet his soliloquy : 

*' 'Tis but to die. Dogs do it, ducks with dabbling, 
Birds sing away their souls, and babies sleep 'em . . ."^ 

is spoken in a temper quite unlike the 

madman's. His argument might even by some 

be considered valid: "For in the other world 

she is bound to have me," he says, "Her princely 

word is past." When others enter, he grows 

wilder, and throughout the play talks in the 

1 "The Mad Lover," ii., 1. 



166 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

most extravagant vein, more particularly to the 
surgeon whom he tries to persuade to cut out 
his heart. " Here I am, sir," says Memnon, 
"Come, look upon me, view the best way boldly; 
Fear nothing, but cut home. If your hand shake, sirrah, 
Or any way deface my heart i' the cutting. 
Make the least scratch upon it ... . 

. . . I'll slice thee to the soul. . . . 
I will not have you smile, sirrah, when you do it. 
As though you cut a lady's corn ; 'tis scurvy. 
Do me it, as thou dost thy prayers, seriously."! 
Here is a man whose mind is certainly in an 
abnormal condition, and, whatever the precise 
nature of that condition may be, it alone gives 
to the play the least vestige of probability. If 
Memnon were sane, the play would be absurd ; 
if he were mad, then madness would once more 
be degraded. As it is, he is not an unpleasing 
fellow ; at times he is even touched with pathos: 
any verdict on him would assuredly be more 
favourable than a just verdict on the play as 
a whole. 



I Ibid., iii., 2. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Mad Folk in Comedy and Tkagedt. 
(vi.) The Pretenders. 

'* I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is 
southerly, I know a ha wit from a handsaw." 

(" Hamlet.") 

Last of all in the long train of madmen 
which has now almost passed us come the 
Pretenders — characters who have feigned in- 
sanity for some purpose. We need not, of course, 
devote much space here to pseudo-lunatics like 
Morose in " The Silent Woman," Bellamont in 
" Northward Ho," Malvolio and Christopher Sly. 
These are all sane enough and have no wish to 
be thought otherwise. They are victimised by 
the pretences of others, and shew none of the 
signs which were supposed to characterise in- 
sanity. Thus they have small interest for us 
and no place in the present section. 

A somewhat different example may be taken 
from Day's "Law Tricks,"^ where Polymetes, 
son of the reigning Duke, pretends, on his 
father's sudden return from a long journey, to 
be deeply immersed in his studies, in order to 
avert the Duke's reproaches for his neglect and 
loose living. His page, a boy " worth his weight 

1 Act iv., scene 2. 

167 



168 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

in pearl," comes to the Duke with a cock-and- 
bull story about an *' English poet " who is with 
the Prince. This is presently supplemented by 
Julio, who explains that "the boy is lunatic." 
His description of the supposed origin of the 
lunacy is most interesting. ** Coming abruptly 
to the Prince's chamber about some ordinary 
service, I found him in his study and a company 
of bottle-nosed devils dancing the Irish hay 
about him, which on the sudden so started the 
poor boy as he clean lost his wits, and ever 
since talks thus idle as your Excellence hath 
heard him." The " studies " of Polymetes, it 
later appears, are in astrology ! 

The " true Pretenders " — if the term may be 
allowed — have on the other hand considerable 
interest, and are well worthy of attention. 
Among other things we may take into con- 
sideration the intention with which they are 
portrayed, how far they fulfil that intention, 
how closely they counterfeit insanity — if any 
such attempt is really made, — and what worth 
they have as characters — how nearly, in other 
words, they resemble men and women. 

Beginning at the bottom of the scale, let us 
take Middleton's " Changeling," a play already 
studied, in which Antonio, the " Changeling " of 
the piece, counterfeits idiocy, and Franciscus 
his companion, pretends to be a madman. 
Their devices, which form the substance of a 



THE PRETENDEBS 169 

somewhat coarse underplot, are not successful. 
This would surprise nobody; the intention of 
the author (or authors) being mainly comic 
relief, little care is shewn and the characters 
are almost worthless. Franciscus says in the 
last scene, **I was changed from a little wit to be 
stark mad"; and Antonio, *'I was changed too 
from a little ass as I was to a great fool as I 
am ! "* The last statement we can take literally. 
For, after all, idiocy is fairly easy to counterfeit, 
and he would be a fool indeed who could not do 
at least equally well. Franciscus is rather better, 
and might really be very ejffective on the stage. 
He is supposed to have " run mad for love," and 
was a " pretty poet " till the muses forsook him. 
He discourses most appropriately of " Titania " 
and "flowery banks," invokes his imaginary 
mistress, and pledges her in imaginary wine.^ 
He succeeds in extorting the pity of Isabella 
with his ravings. The least spark sets him 
alight ; the mere mention of "Luna " is sufficient 
for him to rhapsodise upon, and he works 
himself up to a state of violence which has to 
be calmed by the whip. His snatches of song 
are equally true to life. But he does not 
re-appear for any length of time after this scene, 
and he never again reaches the same level of 
excellence. Apart from this skill in counterfeit 
Franciscus appears to have no character worthy 
1 •• The Changeling," v., 3. 2 Ibid., iii., 3. 



170 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

of the name, and is therefore of small importance. 
Something has already been said of the 
shopkeeper's wife, Tormiella, of Dekker's tragi- 
comedy " Match me in London " ; here, as in 
" The Changeling," and as in many another 
minor play, the feigned madness is utilised for 
the plot and makes little difference to the 
character. We have seen that Dekker has shewn 
considerable skill in weaving this pretended 
madness into the plot as well as in introducing 
it at a favourable place. But the scene is so 
short, and its place in the play of such relatively 
small importance, that we need do no more here 
than repeat that the " feigning " is well done 
and serves its purpose. 

Space may also be found for Dol in 
Jonson's "Alchemist." She goes mad for the 
benefit of Sir Epicure Mammon in the fourth 
act of the play, but unfortunately the learned 
dramatist infuses little probability into her 
feigning. She is not so successful a lunatic as 
Quarlous, though her task is certainly less 
simple. She appears before Mammon "in her fit 
of raving" to discourse of "Alexander's death," 
the "communion of vowels and consonants," 
" Pythagoras," " the tongue of Eber and Javan " 
and so forth. The alleged reason for this is 
given us earlier in the play in a speech by 
Face already quoted.* 

1 Page 14, note 2. 



THE PRETENDERS 171 

In the " Honest Whore," * Bellafront, for her 
own purposes, feigns madness. Her pretence is 
skilful, though Friar Anselmo does not consider 
her dangerous. "How now, huswife," he says 
good-humouredly, "whether gad you?" "A- 
nutting forsooth," answers Bellafront, "How 
do you, gaffer? How do you, gaffer? there's a 
French curt'sy for you too." " Do you not know 
me?" she enquires. "No," reply all. "What 
are they ? " asks Anselmo, " come tell me, what 
are they?" Her answer reminds us of "Hamlet." 
" They're fish-wives," she says, " will you buy 
any gudgeons?" At a later stage in the pro- 
ceedings, she is anxious to tell everyone's 
fortunes and demands sugar-plums as a reward. 
This madness, however, is not without method, 
for the fortune-telling leads to discoveries and 
explanations. When at last Matheo, whom 
Bellafront wishes to marry, declares that if 
her wits are restored he will consent, she at 
once reveals her sanity : 

" Matheo, thou art mine. 
I am not mad; but put on this disguise 
Only for you." 

We now come without any further slips of 
prolixity to the only two pretenders for whom 
we can entertain the least enthusiasm — to 
the classical examples of feigned madness in 
English Drama, Edgar and Hamlet. 

1 " Honest Whore," v., 13. 



172 ELIZABETHAN DBAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

Edgar is represented as simulating " Poor 
Tom " of Bedlam, one of the lunatics who 
roamed about the countryside, possessed by the 
" foul fiend," and dependent upon such charity 
as kindly hearts might prompt. How well he 
counterfeits need only be suggested. It is, after 
all, an easy matter for an author to portray 
feigned madness for a scene or two with some- 
thing like accuracy. But what a genius is 
required to lead his pretender, so to say, 
*' through fire and through flame," place him in 
all kinds of situations, cause him to change his 
disguise from lunatic to peasant, then back to 
lunatic again, marking all the time by subtle 
touches the most delicate shades of expression. 
The burthen of his cry, as one would expect, is 
"Poor Tom's a-cold. . . . The foul fiend 
follows me." Persistently he raves and con- 
sistently, but at times "the natural touch" 
overcomes him, 

'* My tears begin to take his part so much 
They mar my counterfeiting."! 

An even more wonderful effect of art is pointed 
out by Mr. Cowden Clarke. Gloster, now blind, 
would seem to recognise amidst the wild ravings 
of his son " some tone or inflection in Edgar's 
voice . . . and he links (his son's conduct) 
with that of Lear's daughters. Edgar, instinc- 
tively feeling this, perseveres with his Bedlam 

1 " King Lear," iii., 6, 63-4. 



THE PRETENDERS 173 

cry, to drown the betrayed sound of his own 
voice and maintain the impression of his 
assumed character." If this is really Shakes- 
peare's art and not the imagination of the critio 
— as some might think it to be — it is but one 
more illustration of his dramatic genius. 

Apart from such details as these, the charac- 
ter of Edgar, especially during his feigned 
madness, is a genuine masterpiece. At times 
during the play he has certainly some of 
the frigidity — closely allied to a quality which 
is dangerously like self -righteousness — which 
marks Shakespeare's own Isabella. But in 
these scenes of madness he is all tenderness and 
forgiveness. His compassion on his blinded 
father we feel the more keenly in contrast with 
Gloster's own conduct and the ingratitude of 
Lear's children. Edgar is Shakespeare at his 
best and truest — he rings true — we may even 
say that he stands for Truth itself. And thus 
his feigned madness is no ordinary stage-device 
requisitioned by an unmanageable plot. It has 
uses connected with the plot, indeed, but beyond 
these it brings out characteristics of the man 
which endear him to the most hostile spectator. 

Lastly we come to Hamlet and his feigned 
madness. Like most of the Pretenders he is 
introduced into a play where real madness also 
plays a part, but unlike any of them he is 
actually in a condition verging on madness. 



174 ELIZABETHAN DEAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

Possibly it is by a kind of self-preservative 
instinct that he chooses that disguise for his 
purpose of deceiving the King. Fortunately 
he is able to prevent his mind actually giving 
way, and so he defeats the King's designs, 
seeing "a cherub that sees them." He shrinks 
from nothing; his demeanour towards those 
whom he loves, and especially towards Ophelia, 
fully bears out his supposed affliction. He 
appears with doublet all unbraced, 

** No hat upon his head, his stockings foul'd, 
Ungarter'd and down-gyved to his ancle ; 
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other. 
And with a look so piteous in purport 
As if he had been loosed out of hell 
To speak of horrors." i 

His attitude and his words seem to confirm 
the judgment of Polonius : " This is the very 
ecstasy of love."^ He is caught in no trap. 
The presence of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern 
does not suffice to 

'* Get from him why he puts on this confusion 
Grating so harshly all his days of quiet 
With turbulent and dangerous lunacy." 3 

Only the faithful Horatio knows that; elsewhere 
Hamlet " keeps aloof" from the topic with true 
madman's instinct, whenever his state is men- 
tioned. The King pretends to Polonius that 
while the disease is not so serious as it seems, 
only Hamlet's absence from Denmark can 
prevent it from becoming so. In this way he 

1 •' Hamlet " u., 1, 78, etc. 2 Ibid., 1. 102. 3 Ibid., iii., 1, 2-4. 



THE PRETENDERS 176 

gets him removed. But throughout the play, 
whether in his attempts to deceive the Court 
or in his foiling of the King's design, Hamlet 
acts with what might he called the craft of 
true madness. 

It is unnecessary to insist on the complexity 
and the lifelike truth of Hamlet's character. No 
personage in the world's drama has excited 
more criticism. The Prince of Denmark is on 
all sides acknowledged to he supreme. And 
for that reason it is needless to attempt to 
prove what otherwise would he the main con- 
tention of this chapter — that Hamlet is in every 
way the greatest of the Pretenders whom we 
have studied, and, indeed, of the madmen, true 
and false, who form the subject of this essay. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Conclusion.— Shakespeake and his 
contempokakies. 

'* All pains the immortal spirit must endure, 
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow. 
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow." 

{Mattheio Arnold : " Shakespeare,^') 

In such a study as this, dealing largely with 
the work of Shakespeare's contemporaries, it is 
to be hoped that it will not be out of place to 
centre the concluding portion around Shakes- 
peare himself. It is but one aspect of our 
study to compare our greatest dramatist and 
his fellows with respect to their presentation of 
madness, and it is throwing a dim light on 
Shakespeare's greatness to make the comparison 
in such a trivial sphere. Our conclusion is 
thus doubly insignificant, yet we enter upon 
it nevertheless. For if it tells us nothing that 
is new, it serves at least to strengthen our 
present convictions, and this from an entirely 
new standpoint. We shall, then, compare 
Shakespeare and his contemporaries from three 
points of view : in their general ideas and senti- 
ments concerning madness, in their dramatic 
use of madness, and in their representation of 
mad folk as complete figures, the Elizabethan 
dramatists bow one and all before their master. 

176 



CONCLUSION 177 

General Ideas and Sentiments, 

1. To a certain extent, in madness as in 
other departments of life, Shakespeare took 
over the general notions of his day and intro- 
duced them fairly liberally into his work. He 
could hardly do otherwise, for the subject of 
lunacy was so commonplace and found so ready 
a way into ordinary conversation that the 
dramatist who, like Shakespeare, mirrored the 
life and speech of every day, would find himself, 
even against his will, borrowing figures from 
Bedlam. Many of these we have already 
noticed ; a very few more will show the 
diversity of the references. The shipwrecked 
mariners in " The Tempest," " felt a fever of 
the mad and play'd Some tricks of despara- 
tion." Theseus speaks of ** The lunatic, the 
lover and the poet " as being '' of imagination 
all compact." Rosalind mentions "the dark 
house and the whip," Romeo the prison, the 
bonds and the torments, Othello the popular 
view of the influence of the moon. This 
breadth of treatment in casual allusions alone 
might be contrasted with the meagre work of 
his contemporaries. But we must pass on to 
notice that Shakespeare himself was far in 
advance of his time, seeing in some way 
features of insanity which were commonly 
overlooked, and using remedies which we con- 
sider quite "modern," even to-day. His tests 



178 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

for insanity are certainly somewhat crude, but 
they occur rather as allusions, where, as we 
have seen, he adopted the ideas of his day, than 
in full-length portraits, in which he is remark- 
ably exact. A physician of the last century* 
remarks on Lear : " Lear's is a genuine case of 
insanity from the beginning to the end, such 
as we often see in aged persons. On reading 
it we cannot divest ourselves of the idea that 
it is a real case correctly reported." This is 
high praise; and although Shakespeare hardly 
requires such commendation, it is interesting 
to notice the small details which are true to 
life. We have such phrases in " King Lear " as 

"O Lear, Lear, Lear! 
Beat at this gate that let thy folly in, 
And thy dear judgment out," 2 

where the old king beats his head, as 

"O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven I 
Keep me in temper; I would not be mad, "3 

as: 

"O how this mother swells up towards my heart I"* 

" My wits begin to turn," " I am cut to the 
brains," and the like. These are touches which 
can be paralleled by none other of the authors 
who have been dealt with in this study. They 
are the result of a shrewd, penetrating observa- 
tion applied to those mental phenomena which 

1 Dr. Brigham. 2 " King Lear," i., 4, 292. 

3 Ibid., i., 5, 50. < Ibid., ii., 4, 53, and passim. 



CONCLUSION 179 

were displayed before the gaze of any who cared 
to notice them. If we would contrast genius 
with mediocrity, we have only to look at the 
general attitude of Shakespeare's contemporaries 
towards madness and their representation of it. 
Take the scene of Lear's partial restoration to 
reason. With its soft, sweet music, with the 
loving faces surrounding the sleeping sufferer, 
with the gradual re-awakening of sanity — what 
a contrast there is between this and the meta- 
morphosis of Memnon, the mad lover, or even 
the rude art of Ford when he pictures the 
restoration of Meleander. 

Dramatic use of Madness, 

2. The superiority of Shakespeare, again, in 
his dramatic use of madness! If there is one 
thing more than another which arrests a student 
of this subject it is Shakespeare's refusal to 
sacrifice so grand a passion to the interests of 
comedy, to expose it as a butt for the jests of 
the groundlings and a subject for idle conversa- 
tion. His madmen are among his sublimest 
figures ; he introduces them, not after the man- 
ner of Dekker and Middleton, as characters of 
light comedy, but as the agents or the victims 
of tragedy, " more sinned against than sinning." 
They contribute to no coarse underplot, they 
are not introduced to enhance the supposed 
terrors of melodrama — they form part of the 



180 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

plot itself, are inextricably interwoven with it, 
colour its very texture, determine its whole 
character. This is no imagination, but sheer 
fact. " Lear " is the mad king. The word 
"Hamlet" calls up an image, either of the hero's 
" antic disposition " or (which is still more 
likely) of the lonely pathos of Ophelia in her 
last passion. Think, on the contrary, of Shakes- 
peare's contemporaries. There is Fletcher, 
whose Mad Lover certainly colours the play, 
but what a play of farce and absurdity ! There 
is Webster, whose sole use of the madman is for 
the pageantry, and for the intensification by 
means of it of the effect of his catastrophe. Or 
there is Dekker, who paints the interior of a 
Bedlam, for the same reason as elsewhere he 
leads us into a brothel-house — for the sake of a 
so-called realism. Or, if you prefer it, there is 
Middleton, whose madmen supply material for 
the introduction of a trivial underplot and a 
few coarse jests and songs. Nowhere, except 
perhaps in Ford, who appears to have been 
attracted by insanity, to have studied it and to 
have painted it with some insight and sympathy, 
is there any approach in this body of drama 
to the sustained excellence of Shakespeare. 

Mad Folk. 

3. The same fact emerges when we take the 
complete figures and consider them, as has been 



CONCLUSION 181 

done, from a purely literary standpoint. We 
need not go over the whole story again ; it will 
be sufficient if we cast our eye back over each 
group and seize upon the most prominent figures 
in it. Take Trouble-all, Meleander, Shattillion, 
and the Passionate Madman, and, following the 
prescription which Paulina gives to Leontes in 
the " Winter's Tale," choose the best traits from 
each, concentrate, add, improve — and you are 
still far from the august figure of Lear. Surround 
Ophelia with the heroines of Beaumont, Fletcher, 
and Ford. Will anyone assert that either 
Aspatia, or the Gaoler's Daughter, or Penthea 
approaches the fair Ophelia? Take the Pre- 
tenders: where have you so admirable a pretence 
as that of Hamlet, a pretence so realistic that 
many critics of to-day maintain that it is reality, 
and most allow that, if not actually mad, the 
Prince of Denmark was perilously near a state 
of insanity ? It is certainly not in the antics of 
the boy of Polymetes, or of the fool " Tony " 
represented in " The Changeling." Considered 
from this point of view alone, there is no pre- 
tender who does the thing so well as Hamlet, — 
as a masterpiece of literary art no character can 
touch him. If anyone could be said to have the 
slightest claim to do so it would be Shakespeare's 
own Edgar, less important in relation to the 
plot, far less universal in his appeal to mankind 
as a representative of humanity, yet perhaps 



182 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

more wonderfully impressive in the place he 
occupies than any other personage could possibly 
be. 

Or let us look at that unimportant yet not 
wholly negligible group of persons who have 
been made the victims of others, written down 
as asses by the world at large, and are cowering 
over there in a corner. Even here we see that 
Shakespeare's figures are by far the most note- 
worthy. Morose is not uninteresting, and the 
dismay of Bellamont, the " reverent " poet, as he 
is apprehended for a madman and seems to be 
in danger of confinement in Bedlam, is quite a 
diverting incident in the plot. But compare 
them with Shakespeare's figures. Here is 
Christopher Sly, " old Sly's son of Burton-heath, 
by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by 
transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present 
profession a tinker." There is individuality 
here, conveyed in a few lines, — which are quite 
sufficient, notwithstanding, to stamp the charac- 
ter with the impress of Shakespeare's seal. 
Better still, take Malvolio, who is accused of 
madness for a jest, but whose character as 
previously drawn would make an admirable 
reason for the jest being taken seriously. So 
much does he take things to heart that Sir Toby 
thinks he may actually go mad through dis- 
appointment. " Why, thou hast put him in such 
a dream that when the image of it leaves him 



CONCLUSION 183 

he must run mad."* Thorough as always, true 
to life, this is very Shakespeare : none other can 
approach him in his own arena of the stage. 

* sf: * * * * 

The last figure seems to have disappeared 
from the stage, the unmeaning groups of mad- 
men have dispersed, and with them the crowd. 
We turn to go. Yet, as for a moment we look 
back on the scene we have just left, a solitary 
figure meets our eye. It is no madman, no pre- 
tender, and no dupe. It is just the Fool, the 
Fool unparalleled, the Fool of Lear. Ere his 
master's afflictions could drive him mad like 
that master, he went " to bed at noon." Now he 
returns to remind us of his other master, — of 
his creator, — who painted him on the same 
canvas which holds Edgar and Lear, a figure 

" sublime 
With tears and laughter for all time." 

With no more fitting words, inasmuch as they 

describe not alone the Fool but all Shakespeare's 

mad folk, could we close our study. 

1 "Twelfth Night," ii., 5, 211. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

1. HISTOEY AND CRITICISM. 

The Cambridge History of English Literature. 
English Dramatic Literature — A. W. Ward. 
History of English Poetry— W. J. Courthope. 
' The Mad Folk of Shakespeare — Dr. Bucknill. 
Notes on Shakespeare in various editions— notably 

the Variorum. 
/ Shakespearean Tragedy — A. C. Bradley. 
/ Shakespeare, his mind and art— Ed. Dowden. 

Introductions to the various editions mentioned below 

under "Drama." 
Notes and Lectures— S. T. Coleridge. 
Francis Beaumont— G. C. Macaulay. 
The Oxford Dictionary— passim. 
Encyclopaedia Britannica — s.v. Insanity. 
History of the Insane in the British Isles— Tuke. 
The Psychology of Insanity — B. Hart. 
Survey of London— Stow, ed. Kingsford. 
"Have with you to Saffron Walden "— Nash. 
" The Belman of London "—Dekker. 
"Anatomic of the Bodie of Man "— Vicary. 
" Nymphidia " — Drayton. 
"The Battle of Agincourt "—Drayton. 

2. DRAMA. 

The Works of: 

Shakespeare Globe Edn. (and others). 

Lyly edn. 1858. 

Marlowe Oxford Press. 

Beaumont & Fletcher ed. Dyce (11 vol.). 

Massinger ed. Gifford (4 vol.). 

Webster Mermaid Edn. 
184 



BIBLIOaBAPHY 



186 



Ford 


ed. Gifford (2 vol.). 


Middleton 


ed. Bullen (8 vol.). 


Dekker 


ed. Pearson (4 vol.). 


Jonson 


Mermaid Edn. 


Marston 


ed. Bullen. 


Shirley 


ed. Dyce; ed. Gifford. 


Brome 


edn. 1873. 


Day 


ed. Bullen. 


Chettle: Hoffman 


ed. 1852. 



N.B. — References are to the editions named above, 
Specific notes are given where possible to all quotations 
directly bearing on the subject of the essay. 



INDEX OF WORKS DEALT WITH OR 
QUOTED. 

[The letters ff. denote that the worJc is dealt with 
in some detail in the pages referred to.] 

"Albertus Wallenstein." 162. 

"Alchemist, The." 14, 170. 

"American Journal of Insanity." 67. 

"Anatomic of the Bodie of Man, The." 13. 

"Anatomy of Melancholy, The." 8-9, 27, 126. 

"Antipodes, The." 92, 134 ff. 

"As You Like It." 6, 28, 137, 139, 142.4, 177. 

"Ball, The." 12. 

" Bartholomew Fair." 23, 53-4, 113 ff., 181. 

"Battle of Agincourt, The." 5. 

" Belman of London, The." 26. 

"Bird in a Cage, The." 29. 

"Broken Heart, The." 51, 87, 128, 181. 

"Bulwark of Defence, A." 14. 

"Caliban upon Setebos." 121-2. 

"Changeling, The." 12, 25, 32 ff., 48, 50, 58, 124, 168 ff., 181. 

"City Wit, The." 12. 

"Comedy of Errors, The." 15, 20, 62. 

"Compendious Pygment, etc., A." 27. 

"Coronation, The," 12. 

" Cymbeline." 52, 119, 120, 125, 127, 162. 

"Dr. Faustus." 150. 

"Duchess of Malfi, The." 18, 21, 25, 41, 46, 51, 103 ff. 

"Elizabethan Literature" (Saintsbury). 90. 
"Emperor of the East." 14. 

186 



INDEX OF WORKS DEALT WITH OR QUOTED 1&7 

"English Dramatic Literature" (Ward). 56, 89. 
"English Moor, The." II. 
"Epicure." 19, 23, 25, 52, 167, 182. 

"Faerie Queene, The." 87. 
"Fair Quarrel, A." 11. 

"Gentleman Usher, The." 119. 

"Hamlet." 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 47, 49, 50, 61, 56, 60, 75 fP., 81, 
82, 87, 88, 89, 91, 97, 107, 129, 144 ff., 160, 164, 173 ff. 
180, 181. 

"Have with you to Saffron Walden." 122. 

"Henry VI., Part II." 14. 

"Hoffman, The Tragedy of." 96 fe., 119-20. 

"Honest Whore, The." 20, 23, 29, 32 ff., 58, 171. 

" Julius Caesar." 52, 149. 

"King John." 4, 21, 52, 128, 139, 144, 157 ff., 162. 

"King Lear." 3, 10-11, 26, 27, 37, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 

60, 66 ff., 80, 93, 95, 121, 122 ff., 151, 160, 172 ff., 178-9, 

180, 181, 183. 
"Knight of the Burning Pestle, The." 136. 

"Law Tricks." 16, 167-8. 

"Lover's Melancholy, The." 18, 21, 23, 24, 55, 91 ff., 128, 

179, 181. 
"Love's Labour's Lost." 5, 35, 138, 140. 



" Macbeth." 9, 43, 47, 149, 161 ff., 162. 

"Mad Folk of Shakespeare, The." 70, 79, 141, 142, 153, 

154-5. 
"Mad Lover, The." 7, 54-5, 164 ff., 179. 
"Maid's Tragedy, The." 128 ff., 134, 138, 139, 181. 
"Match me in London." 16, 55, 56-8, 170. 
"Measure for Measure." 76. 173. 



188 ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AND ITS MAD FOLK 

"Merchant of Venice, The." 82, 137, 139, 141, 144. 

"Merry Wives of Windsor, The." 16. 

"Midsummer Night's Dream, A." 6, 177. 

" Mother Bombie." 120-1. 

" Much Ado about Nothing." 15,28. 

"New Way to Pay Old Debts, A." 53, 102 ff. 

"Nice Valour, The." See "Passionate Madman." 

" Noble Gentleman, The." 105, 108 E., 116-7, 132, 134, 181. 

" Northern Lass, The." 30, 127, 132 ff. 

" Northward Ho ! " 32 ff., 48, 62, 167. 

" Nymphidia," 17. 

"Old Wives' Tale, The." 65. 
" Orlando Furioso." 61 ff., 151. 
"Othello." 12, 44, 85, 149, 177. 

" Passionate Madman, The." 105 ff., 134, 181. 

" Philaster." 5, 19, 129; 131 ff., 138, 139. 

" Pilgrim, The." 12, 32 ff., 48. 

"Politician, The." 149. 

"Popish Impostures, A Dictionary of." 11. 

"Benegado, The." 163-4. 

" Bichard II." 139, 142. 

" Bomeo and Juliet." 6, 14, 28, 177. 

" Shakespeare, his Mind and Art." 66. 

"Shakespearean Tragedy." 122-3, 125, 148-9. 

"Silent Woman, The." See "Epicene." 

"Sophy, The." 152. 

" Spanish Tragedy, The." 62 ff. 

"Survey of London, A." 31. 

"Taming of the Shrew, The." 17, 128, 167, 182. 

"Tempest, The." 121, 177. 

" Timon of Athens." 4, 159 ff., 161. 

" 'Tis pity she's a Whore." 119. 



INDEX OF WORKS DEALT WITH OR QUOTED 189 

"Troilus and Cressida." N 18> r^S, 137, 139, 140-1, 159. 
"Twelfth Night." 10, 21, 37, 52, 128, 139, 167, 182-3. 
"Two Noble Kinsmen, The." 7, 49, 81 fe., 91, 97, 132, 134, 
181. 

"Unnatural Combat, The." 161, 162. 

" Very Woman, A." 99 ff., 133 ff., 139. 
"Vulgar EiTors." 14. 

"What you will" (Marston). 29. 
" Winter's Tale, The." 5, 181. 
"Witch, The." 9. 
"Witch of Edmonton, The." 151. 



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